Russ Steele
Dennis Avery writes at the Canada Free Press:
Churchville, VA—A reader recently pointed out a fascinating temperature comparison—between 1700 AD and today. He marked two sections of the world’s oldest temperature record—Central England Yearly Average Temperature 1660–2008: The first section showed our famous recent temperature surge from 1976–1998. He also marked a similar strong temperature surge from AD 1688–1738.
The killer in the comparison is that the temperature surge after 1688 was followed by a sudden plunge into one of the coldest periods in the entire Little Ice Age! The cold of 1739-40 was called The Great Frost, and it devastated Europe from Italy to Iceland.
The linkage? The Great Frost followed a period of very few sunspots—the Maunder Minimum (1645–1715). Today, we know that fewer sunspots predict colder temperatures, and the modern world has just undergone a similar dearth of sunspots, from 2007 to 2011.
During the Maunder period, Europe’s glaciers were much larger than today; it was the Little Ice Age, after all. But the glaciers didn’t advance during the sunspot dearth. The winters of the 1730s were actually fairly warm. But during and after the winter of 1739, glaciers advanced strongly through France and Germany, and north into Sweden, Norway and Iceland and didn’t retreat for the next 50 years!
Ireland suffered the most severely. In the depths of the winter of 1739-40, winds and terrible cold intensified. Rivers, lakes, and waterfalls froze and fish died in the first few weeks of the Great Frost. Coal dealers found their coal piles and unloading docks frozen solid. Mill-wheels froze, so the millers and bakers could produce no bread.
Ireland’s crucial potato crop—normally left in the ground until needed for food—froze underground. The tubers were ruined for food, and useless as seed for the following year. The following spring came drought, and the winds remained fierce. The winter wheat and barley sown the previous fall died in the fields. Sheep and cattle died in the pastures. The fall of 1740 saw a small harvest, but the dairy cattle had been so starved that few of them bore calves. Milk production plummeted as the cows’ milk dried up.
That winter, blizzards ranged along the coast, and great chunks of ice sweeping down the River Liffey sank vessels in the harbor. Dublin wheat prices rose to all-time highs.
Meanwhile dysentery, smallpox, and typhus were ravaging a weakened population. Farm workers had seldom gone to town when they had food on their tables; now they wandered in seeking food or relief assistance—and died in great numbers.
The climate disaster finally ended in the summer of 1741. An estimated 400,000 people had died. Desperation gripped the people following both the Great Frost and a warmer bad-weather famine from 1726 to 1730. The harsh variability of the Little Ice Age was being felt full force.
Read the rest of the article here. But this in important to remember:
Usually, there’s about a ten-year lag between sunspot changes and their impact on earth’s temperatures. The sunspots began predicting lower temperatures about 2000, for instance, and the cooling trend began eight years later in 2007. Now the sunspot minimum that just ended is predicting quite serious cold, perhaps about 2020.
Here is a summer temperature forecast in America's bread basket.
A killing June frost would be devastating to America's food supply.
Update (05-10-11, 14:25) Piers Corbyn comments on the orginal post:
Guys, some points on this:
1. The lag between events on the sun and earth weather and earthquake effects is HOURS or days rather than a decade.
2. There are of course also slow (thermal lag) response delays but the remark about a supposed 'ten year lag' means nothing. Generally speaking world temperatures are almost IN PHASE (approx a one or two year lag NOT ten years) with peaks in ODD SOLAR CYCLES. EVEN cycle peaks including large ones are generally with COLDEST world temperatures. The main cycle of world temperatures does NOT follow sunspot numbers (11yr) but the magnetic cycle (22yr) of the sun. Deliberate Confusion on this point enables CO2 Global warmers to doubt solar (or solar-lunar) drivers. So we have to get it right
3. The coming cold period - worst around 2035 is more akin to the Dalton Minimum (~1810) rather than the Maunder Minimum (~1650), but still damned cold - please see my pdf presentation submission to the UK Parliamentary Enquiry into Dec 2010 extreme cold & snow crisis:
http://bit.ly/hEmBqG ESPECIALLY SLIDE 17; and for the general sun-earth-magnetic problem see the ongoing Climate Realists link: "World Cooling has set in....
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=3307&linkbox=true&position=3
4. I know the article is arguing a more specific detail on the lines that 1740 and 2020 might be similar but that view is difficult to support in view of:
- (i) the approaching Dalton-like Minimum explained in link above
- (ii) the 280 year difference between 2020 and 1740 is about 25 single solar cycles NOT a multiple of the double cycle length and so in magnetic terms in the wrong phase.
- (iii) The years before and after 1740 were in fact warming in Central England (compared with the Maunder Minimum) and the winter of 1739-1740 was an astounding exception in a warming trend; the 'looming Dalton-like period' argument points to a general smoothed cooling trend to ~2035. I would add of course NO TWO PERIODS ARE EVER THE SAME so OUR coming Little Ice age will have its very own characteristics.
Thanks Piers Corbyn
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