Dalton Minimum Returns

Expired

This blog has expired. My new blog The Next Grand Minimum will cover many of ths same subjects covered here, plus more analysis of the social and political impact of another grand minimum like the Dalton.

 

Please join me at The Next Grand Minimum.

 

 

Low solar activity link to cold UK winters

Mark Kinver the BBC News Science and Environment reporter has this story on more cold weather in the UK and Continental Europe due to low solar activity. 

They identified a link between fewer sunspots and atmospheric conditions that "block" warm, westerly winds reaching Europe during winter months.
But they added that the phenomenon only affected a limited region and would not alter the overall global warming trend.

The findings appear in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
"By recent standards, we have just had what could be called a very cold winter and I wanted to see if this was just another coincidence or statistically robust," said lead author Mike Lockwood, professor of space environment physics at the University of Reading, UK.

To examine whether there was a link, Professor Lockwood and his co-authors compared past levels of solar activity with the Central England Temperature (CET) record, which is the world's longest continuous instrumental record of such data.

The researchers used the 351-year CET record because it provided data that went back to the beginning of the Maunder Minimum, a prolonged period of very low activity on the Sun that lasted about half a century.

The Maunder Minimum occurred in the latter half of the 17th Century - a period when Europe experienced a series of harsh winters, which has been dubbed by some as the Little Ice Age. Following this, there was a gradual increase in solar activity that lasted 300 years.

Read the rest of the story here.

Now with the Iceland volcano eruptions this week, UK and Continental Europe could be even colder than the Maunder Minimum, especially if the volcano continues to erupt for 2 years like it did in the 1800s Stay tuned.

Henrik Svensmark collapses at Copenhagen

Russ Steele

Henrik Svensmark collapsed during a TV Climate Change debate in Copenhagen. He’s apparently OK for now. He wears a pacemaker and apparently it did something. We wish him godspeed in his recovery, we need his insight to the role of the sun, sunspot and cosmic rays on our climate.  

Climategate Chaos and Sunspot Cycles

Will Alexander has some thoughts on the current Climategate Chaos and includes some information on sunspot cycles in a pdf that readers may enjoy.  

Google search for ‘Climategate’:
Beginning of November: Nil
28 November: 10.4 million hits and rising.
6 December: 31.6 million and still rising!!!!

The international stakes are monumental.
Never in the history of science has a single issue generated so much interest and
controversy. Looking closer, never in the history of science has there been such a flagrant disregard for the fundamental requirements of scientific endeavour.

Download the pdf here.

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.