Dalton Minimum Returns

NASA’s Sunspot Prediction Roller Coaster

This is a must read Guest Posting by Ira Glickstein at Watts Up With That.

Santa brought us a new Sunspot prediction to be added to NASA’s incredibly high series of at least five ill-fated predictions starting in 2006. NASA’s latest peak Sunspot Number for Solar Cycle #24 (SC24) is down 60% from their original, but it still seems a bit too high, judging by David Archibald’s recent WUWT posting that analogizes SC24 and SC25 to SC5 and SC6 which peaked around 50, during the cold period (Dalton minimum) of the early 1800′s.

Something is going on the sun - has it happend before? (Edited)

Russ Steele



The Earth-side of the sun has been spotless for five consecutive days. Solar activity is very low. Credit: SOHO/MDI

You can see all the charts on Watts Up With That. The Ap index has been bumping along the bottom and now has dropped to zero (click for a larger impage).




Leif Svalgaard, shared this in a comment at WUWT:

Bill Livingston has just sent me his latest data. The Livingston-Penn effect is still on track:


The larger dots and circles are yearly medians and means (click for a larger impage).
One of the important things to look for was if the L&P effect would change at solar minimum, going back up into the new cycle [making the effect just a solar cycle thing]. This did not seem to happen, solidifying the notion that something more unusual is going on [of course, the Sun has been there before - in 1645].

More on the Livingston and Penn effect can be found in this paper Sunspots may vanish by 2015.

Exit Question: What do you think is going on?

A Dalton Minimum Repeat is Shaping Up

David Archibald, and Austrailian scientist was one of the major contributors to my Dalton Minimum Returns paper which launchded this blog.  David has since written a book The Past and Future of Climate -- Why the world is cooling and why carbon dioxide won't make a detectable difference.

Anthony Watts writing at Watts Up With That has updated  the charts and graphics, which David used in his book to make the case for a Dalton Minimum Repeat. [Book not avaialbe in the US book stores]  I highly recommend that you take a look at the updated graphics, as they strengthen David's case for a return of a Grand Minimum like the Dalton.

Sunny days for CLOUD experiment - it is working!

Russ Steele

Nature's The Great Beyond - bring you news from the world of science has the story:

An experiment designed to investigate the link between solar activity and the climate has its first results in the bag. At the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco today, Joachim Curtius presented data from the first runs of the CLOUD ('cosmics leaving outdoor droplets') experiment at CERN - the European particle physics lab outside of Geneva.

Bottom line:

The results haven't yet been published, so Curtius declined to discuss the details. But the important thing is that the project is working - they have seen sulphuric acid and water combine to make particles when blasted by the CERN beam, for example, in a way that matches predictions of the most recent models. The data should help the team to quantify how much of an impact the Sun is having on climate within 2-3 years, Curtius says - though there are a lot more pieces of the puzzle to fill in.

Read the rest of the post here.

Synchronized Northern Hemisphere climate change and solar magnetic cycles during the Maunder Minimum

Yasuhiko T. Yamaguchi, Yusuke Yokoyama, Hiroko Miyahara, Kenjiro Sho, and Takeshi Nakatsuka

Abstract:
The Maunder Minimum (A.D. 1645–1715) is a useful period to investigate possible sun–climate linkages as sunspots became exceedingly rare and the characteristics of solar cycles were different from those of today. Here, we report annual variations in the oxygen isotopic composition (δ18O) of tree-ring cellulose in central Japan during the Maunder Minimum. We were able to explore possible sun–climate connections through high-temporal resolution solar activity (radiocarbon contents; Δ14C) and climate (δ18O) isotope records derived from annual tree rings. The tree-ring δ18O record in Japan shows distinct negative δ18O spikes (wetter rainy seasons) coinciding with rapid cooling in Greenland and with decreases in Northern Hemisphere mean temperature at around minima of decadal solar cycles. We have determined that the climate signals in all three records strongly correlate with changes in the polarity of solar dipole magnetic field, suggesting a causal link to galactic cosmic rays (GCRs). These findings are further supported by a comparison between the interannual patterns of tree-ring δ18O record and the GCR flux reconstructed by an ice-core 10Be record. Therefore, the variation of GCR flux associated with the multidecadal cycles of solar magnetic field seem to be causally related to the significant and widespread climate changes at least during the Maunder Minimum.

It is the sun, not CO2 that warms the ocean

Russ Steele

P Gosseling, who blogs at the No Tricks Zone, attended the 3rd International Conference on Climate and Energy in Berlin Germany and posts a report here. I was especially interested in the presentation on the solar links to climate change by Nir Shaviv, Henrik Borchert, and Jan Veizer.

Gosseling writes:

Nir Shaviv then explained solar activity and climate, showing that the link between solar activity, cosmic rays and cloud formation is pretty much in the bag. CERN will be soon releasing results on this, too. Oceanic warming is not due to CO2, but to solar radiation. In fact, sea level rise rate correlates with the solar cycles, which I found interesting. Yet, in all presentations, the scientists cautioned against confusing correlation with causation. In summary, Shaviv theorises that the sun modulates the oceans, which in turn modulate the atmosphere (climate). The lag between solar activity and impact on climate was said to be about 3 years. Thus we ought to start seeing the impacts of the current low solar activity that has set in since about 2008.

(My emphasis added) The whole report is here. Pictures included. I can recommend the No Tricks Zone, as it provides a unique German view on global warming issues.