Dalton Minimum Returns

Solar cycles, not CO2 control our climate

Russ Steele

Stephen Wilde has a exclusive report at his Solar Cycle 25 blog this morning: The Critical Importance of Solar Cycles. Climate history tells us that solar cycles have controlled our climate, producing maximums and minimums, something the IPCC decided to ignore or minimize.  Wilde presents a historical perspective. With the solar cycle 23 growing longer and longer, the probability of a grand minimum increase day by day. 

Wilde's Summary:

This site looks ahead to Cycle 25 because by the time it begins in the 2020s the climate effect of changes in solar activity will be clear to all. Modern and future sensing techniques will leave little room for doubts.

Indeed it may well be that by then and if the current trend in solar activity continues then we will be seeing significant global cooling which will render our current concerns laughable if we were not to be already crying as a result of the misguided energy policy changes put into effect from fear of CO2.

CO2 the beneficial gas must be distinguished from the harmful carbon particulates produced by fuel burning. The latter can be dealt with relatively easily. The former cannot be affected (if at all) without horrendous worldwide economic and social consequences which may well be all for nought.

This being cross posted at NC Media Watch

The sunspot debate is on a WUWT

David Archibald has another interesting sunspot post at Watts Up With That that is challenged by Leif Svalgaard.  Archibald writes – The Ap Index says: “There will be no sunspots”  Leif Svalgaard does not agree.

Sun spot cycles and global cooling

Kirk Melhuish Atlanta Weather Examiner: Sun spot cycle impacting global warming and cooling

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Theodore Landscheidt in New Ice Age Instead of Global Warming warned the decline could continue in solar activity until a Maunder Minimum like level was reached about 2030.

The Russians appear to agree. Khabibullo Abdusamatov of the Russian Academy of Science said he and his colleagues had concluded that a period of global cooling similar to one seen in the late 17th century - when canals froze in the Netherlands and people had to leave their dwellings in Greenland - could start in 2012-2015 and reach its peak in 2055-2060.

The late Rhodes Fairbridge of Columbia University had found with the help of NASA and the JPL, every 179 years or so, the sun embarks on a new cycle of orbits. One of the cooler periods in recent centuries was the Little Ice Age of the 17th century, when the Thames River in London froze over each winter. The next cool period, if the pattern holds, began in 1996, with the effects to be felt starting in 2010. Some predict three decades of severe cold..

Clilverd et al (2006) in a paper “Predicting Solar Cycle 24 and Beyond” found by using an harmonic analysis of the multiple cycle frequencies of solar cycles in a model that correctly has caught the activity the past 250 years with a sunspot number standard deviation of 34. Their analysis suggest cycles 24 and 25 will be the lowest (quietest and thus coolest) in nearly 200 years. The two cycles should be like those of the Dalton Minimum.

Much will be learned the next 5-15 years if the solar cycle decline with cooling temperatures continues. Past studies have shown that sunspot numbers correspond to warming or cooling trends. The twentieth century has featured heightened activity, indicating a warming trend.

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The next couple of years are going to be most interesting for sun watchers, weather forecasters, and farmers.   Stay Tuned.

Solar Sleuths Tackle the "Quiet Sun"

Russ Steele

Sky and Telescope has a very interesting article on Sun Spots, in the News section written by Kelly Beatty. Details here.

Where did the sunspots go?

Russ Steele

The American Astronomical Society has the answers in this press release. Maybe?  See WUWT for the details, not everyone is convinced.

Mystery of the Missing Sunspots, Solved?

June 17, 2009: The sun is in the pits of a century-class solar minimum, and sunspots have been puzzlingly scarce for more than two years. Now, for the first time, solar physicists might understand why.

At an American Astronomical Society press conference today in Boulder, Colorado, researchers announced that a jet stream deep inside the sun is migrating slower than usual through the star’s interior, giving rise to the current lack of sunspots.

Rachel Howe and Frank Hill of the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona, used a technique called helioseismology to detect and track the jet stream down to depths of 7,000 km below the surface of the sun. The sun generates new jet streams near its poles every 11 years, they explained to a room full of reporters and fellow scientists. The streams migrate slowly from the poles to the equator and when a jet stream reaches the critical latitude of 22 degrees, new-cycle sunspots begin to appear.



Above: A helioseismic map of the solar interior. Tilted red-yellow bands trace solar jet streams. Black contours denote sunspot activity. When the jet streams reach a critical latitude around 22 degrees, sunspot activity intensifies.

Dalton Minimum Return Update

Russ Steele

The above slide is from David Archibald's Professional Development Course, The Past and Future of Climate. He has some very interesting graphics in his full presentation here. 

David provided the graphic below in an exclusive to solarcycle25.com.

 
I am inclined to agree with David, we are headed for a replay of the Dalton Minimum, or worse, and all the consequences that comes with a Grand Minimum, cold miserable weather that will limit food production. We may be in for the Perfect Storm, limited food production at a time when our governments are mandating increased production of bio-fuels, turning food into fuel. This will accelerate the starvation of millions of people. 

The Cheshire Cat and the Sun

Russ Steele

Anthony Watts has posted a guest essay by W. Livingston, National Solar Observatory, and M. Penn, National Solar Observatory to the unusual behavior the sun at Watts Up With That

Physical conditions in the infrared at 1.5 microns, including maximum magnetic field strength and temperature, have been observed spectroscopically in 1391 sunspots 1990 to 2009 (1). We emphasize the quantitative difference between our IR sunspot measurements and the visible light results from most solar magnetographs employed world-wide. The latter are compromised by scattered light and measure flux, not field strength. A lower limit of ~1800 Gauss is required to form spot umbra. The umbral maximum field strength has declined over the above interval, perhaps because spots have on average diminished in size. The present condition of solar activity minimum has more spotless days than since the 1910s (2). The Cheshire Cat behavior is related to magnetic surface fields often appearing without accompanying dark spots.

Livingston and Penn conclude:

Physical explanations of this deep minimum are at present speculative. Modelers invoke flux transport, meridional flows, and other subsurface mechanisms. Whether this diminished vigor in sunspots is indicative of another Maunder Minimum, remains to be seen. We should mention, too, that the solar wind is reported to be in a lower energy state than found since space measurements began nearly 40 years ago (7). Will the Cheshire Cat Effect persist?

The Eddy Minimum it is

Russ Steele

The discover of the Maunder Minimum has passed and his friend Leif Svalgaard, a well known solar scientist, will propose that if a true minimum develops it be called the Eddy Minimum. 

At the Solar Physics Division [of the American Astronomical Society] next week in Boulder, CO, I’ll formally request that if a significant solar minimum materializes that it be called the ‘Eddy Minimum’.

Details at Watts Up With That.   Al Gore is about to become a footnote in climate history. He will soon be forgotten if the Eddy Minimum develops in to a full blown solar minimum, nothing more than a footnote.

Amateur radio and sunspots

Russ Steele

It was my interest in amateur radio and sparked an interest in sunspots. Long distance communication is impacted by how active the sun is, and sunspots are an indicator of how active the sun is. Therefore, the Amateur Radio Relay League tracks sunspot activity. They currently have an online article on NASA Releases New Predictions for Solar Cycle 24, which includes a discussion of the Maunder Minimum.

Right now -- June 2009 -- the solar cycle is in a valley, the deepest of the past century. In 2008 and 2009, the Sun showed some of the lowest sunspot counts on record, as well as weak solar winds and a low solar irradiance, going more than two years without a significant solar flare. "In our professional careers, we've never seen anything quite like it," Pesnell said. "Solar minimum has lasted far beyond the date we predicted in 2007."

In recent months, however, Pesnell said that the Sun has begun to show some small signs of life: Small sunspots and "proto-sunspots" are popping up with increasing frequency. Enormous currents of plasma on the Sun's surface are gaining strength and slowly drifting toward its equator. Radio astronomers have detected a tiny but significant uptick in solar radio emissions. All these things are precursors of an awakening Solar Cycle 24 and form the basis for the panel's new, almost unanimous forecast.

Sun spots and temperature

Russ Steele

Dan Pangburn has an interesting analysis of Sunspots; The Cause of the 20th Century Temperature Run-up at the new Solar Cycle 25 Blog.

The sun has not been this quiet this long since 1913. The current extremely low solar activity combined with the declining PDO will result in rapidly declining average global temperature. This can be expected to prevail for at least the 30 year decline of the PDO. The general decline can be expected to continue until the sun becomes active again. Although the above shows a rational connection between sunspots and average global temperature, it does not necessarily mean that direct solar intensity (SOI) change causes earth temperature change. It does, however, indicate that the combined effects of processes associated with sunspots provide a rational explanation for earth temperature change. Separate studies have shown that earth’s temperature is very sensitive to clouds. For instance, a simple thermal model was constructed with average earth as a node and average clouds covering about half the earth’s surface as another node. Decreasing the average cloud temperature of 258K by 2.06°C, an amount equivalent to increasing the average altitude by 317 meters, gives the result that average surface temperature increases by 0.74°C.

It isn’t CO2 so it must be something else. I expect that it is some combination of SOI, solar wind, cosmic rays, UV, disturbances in the earth's magnetic field, relative humidity (propensity to form clouds), ocean turn-over and possibly things not yet discovered, all of which still needs to be sorted out. Since average global temperature is sensitive to clouds, I suspect that the combination acts as a catalyst for cloud formation which then drives average global temperature.