Posts Tagged ‘Dalton minimum’

« Older Entries

The sun dances to its own tune with unexpectedly high activity in February

March 4, 2014

There is more we don’t know that we don’t know that we don’t know. (with apologies to Donald Rumsfeld).

While Solar Cycle 24 is still showing the lowest sunspot activity in 100 years, its activity during February was unexpectedly high.  And we don’t really know why.

SC24 Feb 2014 graphic NOAA data from informthpundits

SC24 Feb 2014 graphic NOAA data from informthepundits

The increased activity in February was certainly not expected but SC24 still remains at a very low activity level compared to recent Solar Cycles.

SC21 - SC24 from solen.info

SC21 – SC24 from solen.info

It is a little too early to see if the similarities with Solar Cycles 5 and 6 (during the time of the Dalton Minimum) will hold up and lead us into another Little Ice Age. Or whether this Landscheidt Minimum will just lead to a 30 year cooling period without quite producing a Little Ice Age.

Interesting times.

The Sun will continue to dance to its own tune and we will make believe that we know what it is doing.

But we ignore the Sun at our peril.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Science, Solar science | Comments Off on The sun dances to its own tune with unexpectedly high activity in February

Solar Cycle 24’s double peak is not over yet

November 4, 2013

I thought we had reached solar maximum (albeit at a very low level) for this Solar Cycle 24 about a month ago with a double peak apparently having been evident in May. But the recent burst of solar activity during October suggests that the double peak may not be quite over yet.

SC24 sunspot activity October 2013

SC24 sunspot activity October 2013

Nasa’s prediction for SC24  (Wilson, Hathaway, and Reichmann) now looks like this:

SC24 prediction November 2013

SC24 prediction November 2013

Solar Maximum which was expected this fall may be somewhat delayed and might even be pushed back to the end of 2013.

The activity levels are still historically low and if SC 25 continues at very low levels then we will be getting close to the conditions of the Dalton and perhaps the Maunder Minimum. The sequence of solar cycles SC23,24 and 25 (Landscheidt Minimum) are then to be compared to the sequence of cycles SC4,5 and 6 for the Dalton Minimum whereas the Maunder Minimum corresponds to the period before solar cycle numbering started (prior to SC1).

Solar science is a long, long way from being a settled science and it always amazes me that “climate science”, which is overwhelmingly dependent upon the solar dynamo in its many various forms, can be considered to be settled. And not only settled, but so little dependent upon solar effects!

We ignore the Sun at our peril!

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Solar science | Comments Off on Solar Cycle 24’s double peak is not over yet

Ice Age must be imminent: UK government predicts no cooling for “several centuries”

November 1, 2013

We are in a global cooling cycle and this may be a:

  1. a regular c. 30 year warming/cooling cycle influenced heavily by the multi-decadal ocean cycles, or
  2. another Little Ice Age – dominated by the solar sunspot cycles –  with the current Landscheidt Minimum comparable to the Dalton or the Maunder Minimum, or
  3. the ending of this interglacial  with a gradual return to glacial condition.

If anything can ensure that we are in for another Ice Age it must be this rather inane statement by the UK Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Baroness Verma) when answering a question in the House of Lords:

All of the climate models and policy-relevant pathways of future greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions considered in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) recent Fifth Assessment Report show a long-term global increase in temperature during the 21st century is expected. In all cases, the warming from increasing greenhouse gases significantly exceeds any cooling from atmospheric aerosols. Other effects such as solar changes and volcanic activity are likely to have only a minor impact over this timescale.

With regard to future glaciation the timescales are very long. Changes in the Earth’s orbit are considered to have driven the glacial cycles that have occurred every 100,000 years approximately, during the past one million years. The British Antarctic Survey has advised that the Earth is about halfway through the current interglacial period and the onset of the next glaciation is not expected for around 10,000 years at least. Although a future extensive glaciation would have huge geopolitical consequences, the transition into such a state would be slow, allowing for adaptation over many generations.

The slow changes in the Earth’s orbit are not, however, expected to cause any net global cooling over the next several centuries, which will be dominated by a warming global climate due to greenhouse gas emissions.

Baroness Verma’s faith in the IPCC and her religious adherence to global warming orthodoxy is touching. But the only thing we can be absolutely certain about is that the UK Government and Baroness Verma have surely got it wrong. In fact, the propensity of Baroness Verma to get (all) things wrong would suggest that glaciation has already started.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, UK | 1 Comment »

Probability of Maunder-like minimum increases

October 28, 2013

I have been of the opinion for some time now that the current Landscheidt Minimum that we are in has a reasonable probability of reaching Dalton Minimum conditions and even developing into a Maunder-like minimum. The Landscheidt Minimum has yet to be officially named. It seems increasingly probable that we are in for some 20 – 30 years of  global cooling. This has not been the view of the global warming enthusiasts who don’t  much believe in the Sun. But now some heavy-weight opinions are also giving more credence to the possibility of a Maunder-like Minimum. We have currently reached solar maximum in Solar Cycle 24 and SC24 and the coming SC25 are comparable to SC’s 4,5 and 6 which corresponded with the Dalton Minimum. Note that the numbering system for Solar Cycles only starts after the Maunder Minimum.

Paul Hudson has been talking to Professor Mike Lockwood:

It’s known by climatologists as the ‘Little Ice Age’, a period in the 1600s when harsh winters across the UK and Europe were often severe. The severe cold went hand in hand with an exceptionally inactive sun, and was called the Maunder solar minimum. 

Now a leading scientist from Reading University has told me that the current rate of decline in solar activity is such that there’s a real risk of seeing a return of such conditions. I’ve been to see Professor Mike Lockwood to take a look at the work he has been conducting into the possible link between solar activity and climate patterns. 

According to Professor Lockwood the late 20th century was a period when the sun was unusually active and a so called ‘grand maximum’ occurred around 1985. Since then the sun has been getting quieter. By looking back at certain isotopes in ice cores, he has been able to determine how active the sun has been over thousands of years. 

Following analysis of the data, Professor Lockwood believes solar activity is now falling more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years. He found 24 different occasions in the last 10,000 years when the sun was in exactly the same state as it is now – and the present decline is faster than any of those 24. Based on his findings he’s raised the risk of a new Maunder minimum from less than 10% just a few years ago to 25-30%. And a repeat of the Dalton solar minimum which occurred in the early 1800s, which also had its fair share of cold winters and poor summers, is, according to him, ‘more likely than not’ to happen. He believes that we are already beginning to see a change in our climate – witness the colder winters and poor summers of recent years – and that over the next few decades there could be a slide to a new Maunder minimum. 

It’s worth stressing that not every winter would be severe; nor would every summer be poor. But harsh winters and unsettled summers would become more frequent. 

Professor Lockwood doesn’t hold back in his description of the potential impacts such a scenario would have in the UK. He says such a change to our climate could have profound implications for energy policy and our transport infrastructure. Although the biggest impact of such solar driven change would be regional, like here in the UK and across Europe, there would be global implications too. ……… 

Recent solar activity (Wikipedia) showing the Maunder and Dalton minima

Tags:, , , , , , , ,
Posted in Climate, Solar science | 1 Comment »

Solar Cycle 24 has passed its maximum – 25 years of cooling to be expected in this Landscheidt minimum

October 4, 2013

The September sunspot numbers are now out and it would seem that Solar Cycle 24 has passed its maximum. It looks very much like SC23, SC24 and the coming SC25 will be comparable to SC4, 5 and 6. Solar Cycles 5 and 6 were responsible for the Dalton Minimum. SC 24 and 25 will constitute the Landscheidt Minimum and we can now expect some 25 additional years of global cooling (which has of course already started – about 6 or 7 years ago).

LSC: This month was recorded as the lowest month since Jan 2011 which was the beginning of the rampup for SC24. Cycle max is close or passed with the northern hemisphere changing polarity and the south still somewhat floundering. The southern hemisphere just outweighing the northern hemisphere, showing the south is not meeting expectations by some that a second peak will occur. … SIDC 36.9, NOAA unadjusted at 55.0 (prov). 

NASA has made its latest prediction:

SC24 prediction October 2013

SC24 prediction October 2013

The transition from SC 23 to SC 24 looks very similar to that from SC4 to SC5.

SC4-6 and Dalton

SC4-6 and Dalton

Of course the IPCC makes little of any solar effects and while the variation of direct total irradiance is small, they are rather nonchalant about the very many profound ways in which solar effects manifest themselves in climate (via cloud formation and ocean cycles for example). But the global warmists and the IPCC have now so much invested in their increasingly dubious hypothesis that they are prepared to make the most convoluted contortions to deny the hiatus and that global cooling has started.

Judith Curry: 

Section 8.4.1 of the IPCC AR5 Report provides 2 pages of discussion on observations of solar irradiance.  But they conclude that all this doesn’t matter for the climate.  I agree that the TSI RF variations are much less than projected increased forcing due to the GHG.  But the solar-climate connection is probably a lot more complex than this statement implies. …..

…. Henrik Svensmark has an essay While the Sun Sleeps, …..

Solar activity has always varied. Around the year 1000, we had a period of very high solar activity, which coincided with the Medieval Warm Period. But after about 1300 solar activity declined and the world began to get colder. It was the beginning of the episode we now call the Little Ice Age.

It’s important to realise that the Little Ice Age was a global event. It ended in the late 19th Century and was followed by increasing solar activity. Over the past 50 years solar activity has been at its highest since the medieval warmth of 1000 years ago. But now it appears that the Sun has changed again, and is returning towards what solar scientists call a “grand minimum” such as we saw in the Little Ice Age.

The match between solar activity and climate through the ages is sometimes explained away as coincidence. Yet it turns out that, almost no matter when you look and not just in the last 1000 years, there is a link. Solar activity has repeatedly fluctuated between high and low during the past 10,000 years. In fact the Sun spent about 17 per cent of those 10,000 years in a sleeping mode, with a cooling Earth the result.

You may wonder why the international climate panel IPCC does not believe that the Sun’s changing activity affects the climate. The reason is that it considers only changes in solar radiation. That would be the simplest way for the Sun to change the climate – a bit like turning up and down the brightness of a light bulb.

Satellite measurements have shown that the variations of solar radiation are too small to explain climate change. But the panel has closed its eyes to another, much more powerful way for the Sun to affect Earth’s climate. In 1996 we discovered a surprising influence of the Sun – its impact on Earth’s cloud cover. High-energy accelerated particles coming from exploded stars, the cosmic rays, help to form clouds.

[C]limate scientists try to ignore this possibility.  If the Sun provoked a significant part of warming in the 20th Century, then the contribution by CO2 must necessarily be smaller.

The outcome may be that the Sun itself will demonstrate its importance for climate and so challenge the theories of global warming. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth – quite the contrary. ….

 

 

 

Tags:, , , , , , , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Science, Solar science | 1 Comment »

Solar Cycle 24 double peak now clearly evident

May 9, 2013

Already in March there were signs that this Solar Cycle 24 would exibit a double peak. NASA’s latest sunspot prediction for Solar Cycle 24 as of 1st May 2013 clearly shows that the sunspot activity is into its “double peak for this Cycle. A double peak was also evident in Cycles 22 and 23 and also in Cycles 5 and 14. The levels for SC24 are still going to be the lowest for 100 years and predictions for SC 25 are that they will be even lower still. Most second peaks have been somewhat smaller than the first – though not in SC5 – and seem to add around 6 months to the cycle time.

If this is indeed a double peak then I expect that solar maximum will perhaps be a few months delayed from the NASA prediction of Fall 2013. End 2013 now seems more likely.

SC24 may 2013

The Dalton minimum spanned Solar Cycles 5 and 6 from 1790 to 1820.  The Maunder Minimum from 1645 to 1715 preceded the numbering of Solar Cycles (Solar Cycle 1 started in 1755). The likelihood that SC 24 and 25 may be similar to SC 5 and 6 is growing and so is the likelihood that we will see 2  – 3 decades of global cooling. It is more likely that for the next 20- 30 years this Landscheidt Minimum will resemble the Dalton Minimum period, but if SC25 is a very small cycle then we may even approach the conditions of the Little Ice Age during the Maunder Minimum. Landscheidt’s prediction was that this minimum would last from 2000 to 2060 and the global temperature stand-still for the last 15 years gives greater credence to his forecasts.

NASA: The Sunspot Cycle —

The Maunder Minimum

Early records of sunspots indicate that the Sun went through a period of inactivity in the late 17th century. Very few sunspots were seen on the Sun from about 1645 to 1715 (38 kb JPEG image). Although the observations were not as extensive as in later years, the Sun was in fact well observed during this time and this lack of sunspots is well documented. This period of solar inactivity also corresponds to a climatic period called the “Little Ice Age” when rivers that are normally ice-free froze and snow fields remained year-round at lower altitudes. There is evidence that the Sun has had similar periods of inactivity in the more distant past. The connection between solar activity and terrestrial climate is an area of on-going research.

Tags:, , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Climate, Science, Solar science | Comments Off on Solar Cycle 24 double peak now clearly evident

Double peak in Solar Cycle 24? as in SC14 and in SC5?

March 4, 2013

The NOAA/NASA Solar Cycle Prediction Panel is puzzled. They don’t know if we are reaching solar maximum or whether another little peak could be on its way which would shift solar maximum for SC24 to 2014 from 2013.

And should we compare SC24 with SC14 or should it be SC5?

But SC24 will still show the lowest sunspot activity for 100 years. I note that not only SC14 but even SC5 had a double peak – so my expectation remains that this Landscheidt Minimum may be comparable to the Dalton Minimum – though not perhaps to the Maunder Minimum.

credit Dr. Tony Phillips

credit Dr. Tony Phillips

This Sciencecast video is a good summary of what we don’t know:

Landscheidt’s prediction is that this Minimum will last till 2060 so we can expect low sunspot activity for the next 4 sunspot cycles (till SC28).

Landscheidt’s predicted solar minima

The Sc24 –  SC5 comparison looks like a repeating pattern but it would be wrong to assume that the Sun cares about this and it will surely continue to keep us perplexed as it does its own thing.

SC24 compared to SC5

The Big Picture is persuasive – even if we don’t really know what the sun is upto and even less about how the Earth dances to the Sun’s music.

Recent solar activity (Wikipedia) showing the Maunder and Dalton minima

Related:

Solar cycles and the Landscheidt minimum

Theodor landscheidt: Sun-Earth-Man and the Kepler ratios

Tags:, , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Climate, Solar science | Comments Off on Double peak in Solar Cycle 24? as in SC14 and in SC5?

Solar Cycle 24 will be the smallest sunspot cycle since 1906 (SC 14)

January 5, 2013

The January 2013 NASA forecast for the development of Solar Cycle 24 is out.

sc 24 prediction January 2013

SC 24 prediction Jan 2013 – Hathaway -NASA

The current prediction for Sunspot Cycle 24 gives a smoothed sunspot number maximum of about 69 in the Fall of 2013. The smoothed sunspot number has already reached 67 (in February 2012)due to the strong peak in late 2011 so the official maximum will be at least this high and this late. We are currently over four years into Cycle 24. The current predicted and observed size makes this the smallest sunspot cycle since Cycle 14 which had a maximum of 64.2 in February of 1906.

With sunspot activity at this low level the planet will cool. It remains to be seen whether this is the start of something like a Dalton Minimum (SC5 and 6) or even a Maunder Minimum. This cooling has begun and global temperatures peaked about 16 years ago and are now declining slightly while carbon dioxide concentration continues to increase. It is only a matter of time before the belief that carbon dioxide concentration (whether man-made or not) causes global warming will have to be completely discarded. But there is so much money now riding on this belief (and even though there is only conjecture and no direct evidence for this belief), that we will likely see a decade or more of rationalisation of reality before the belief is abandoned.

SC24 compared to SC5 in 2011 is shown below:

SC24 compared to SC5

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Climate, Solar science | 1 Comment »

Droughts on the Tibetan plateau coincide with grand solar minima

May 14, 2012

Yet another paper indicating that climate and solar behaviour are related – at least over the Tibetan plateau and at least over the last 1000 years.

Tree ring based precipitation reconstruction in the south slope of the middle Qilian Mountains, northeastern Tibetan Plateau, over the last millennium

by Junyan Sun and Yu Liu,  Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an, China

JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 117, D08108, 11 PP., 2012
doi:10.1029/2011JD017290

Reconstruction of precipitation amounts for the edge of the Tibet Plateau. The bars on the chart depict prominent weak phases of solar activity, which correspond to Om = Oort Minimum; Wm = Wolf Minimum; Sm = Spörer Minimum; Mm = Maunder Minimum; Dm = Dalton Minimum). Figure from: Sun & Liu (2012).

Geologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning and chemist Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt have written a summary of this paper (in German), and this translation is from P Gosselin at NoTricksZone

New Study of the Tibet Plateau: Whenever Solar Activity is Weak, the Rains Disappear
By Sebastian Lüning and Fritz Vahrenholt

The Tibet Plateau is at 3000 to 5000 meters elevation and is the highest and (most) expansive high plateau on Earth. Therefore it reacts sensitively to climate changes. Junyan Sun and Yu Liu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences studied tree rings in the northwest plateau edge from two living 1000 year old trees. Tree growth in the area of study is particularly sensitive to the amount of precipitation. (more…)

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Climate, Solar science | Comments Off on Droughts on the Tibetan plateau coincide with grand solar minima

Japanese astronomers also see a Maunder-like solar minimum coming

April 21, 2012

We have been seeing signs that a new solar minimum is probably established and that we are in for a decade or two or three of global cooling. Whether this minimum will be as deep as the Maunder Minimum (1645 – 1715) or more like the Dalton Minimum (1790 – 1830) remains to be seen. Of course we will not know whether we are truly in a Solar Minimum until we are half-way through it. It has been proposed that this new minimum be named after Theodor Landscheidt who predicted this in 1989.

Now Japanese astronomers are also predicting a solar minimum similar to the Dalton Minimum and a period of global cooling. However results from the solar  observation satellite Hinode also suggest that an unusual configuration of the sun’s magnetic poles may also be on its way.

Asahi Shimbun.

(more…)

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Climate, Science, Solar science | 2 Comments »

« Older Entries
%d bloggers like this: