by J.A. Marusek, February 2018, in WUWT
The sun is the natural source of heat and light for our planet. Without our sun, the earth would be a cold dead planet adrift in space. But the sun is not constant. It changes and these subtle changes affect the Earth’s climate and weather.
At the end of solar cycle 23, sunspot activity declined to a level not seen since the year 1913. [Comparing Yearly Mean Total Sunspot Numbers1]
The following was observed during the solar cycle 24: (…)
by P Homewood, February 10, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat
As mentioned yesterday, scientists now believe we could be heading into a 50 year period of reduced solar activity similar to what happened in the mid-17th century, which could lead to a drop in global temperatures of “several tenths of a degree Celsius”.
As has been pointed out, climate is a far more complex matter than climate scientists admit, and one about which we still know very little.
Whether a Maunder-like Minimum will happen again in the next few years, and whether it will have the effect claimed, remain to be seen.
But there is considerable evidence that the Maunder Minimum did coincide with a sharp fall in temperatures across the NH, as NASA show above.
See also here
by A Watts, September 10, 2009 in WUWT
UPDATED: This opinion piece from Professor Henrik Svensmark was published September 9th in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Originally the translation was from Google translation with some post translation cleanup of jumbled words or phrases by myself. Now as of Sept 12, the translation is by Nigel Calder. Hat tip to Carsten Arnholm of Norway for bringing this to my attention and especially for translation facilitation by Ágúst H Bjarnason – Anthony
(…)
by Dr Benny Peiser, January 24, 2018 in ClimateChangeDispatch
The solar variability is not negligible in comparison with the energy imbalance that drives global temperature change.
Therefore, because of the combination of the strong 2016 El Niño and the phase of the solar cycle, it is plausible, if not likely, that the next 10 years of global temperature change will leave an impression of a ‘global warming hiatus.’ —James Hansen et al, 18 January 2018
The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has lodged a new complaint with the BBC about its misleading reporting on global warming.
See also here
by K. Richard, December 28, 2017 in ClimateChangeDispatch
During 2017, 120 papers linking historical and modern climate change to variations in solar activity and its modulators (clouds, cosmic rays) have been published in scientific journals.
It has been increasingly established that low solar activity (fewer sunspots) and increased cloud cover (as modulated by cosmic rays) are highly associated with a cooling climate.
In recent years, the Earth has unfortunately left a period of very high solar activity, the Modern Grand Maximum. Periods of high solar activity correspond to multi-decadal- to centennial-scale warming.
Solar scientists are now increasingly forecasting a period of very low activity that will commence in the next few years (by around 2020 to 2025). This will lead to climate cooling, even Little Ice Age conditions.
Thirteen recently-published papers forecasting global cooling are listed below.
by Willis Eschenbach, December 26, 2017 in WUWT
Last week, Anthony highlighted a study by Svensmark, Shaviv et al. in a post entitled New paper: The missing link between cosmic rays, clouds, and climate change on Earth. While some were enthusiastic about their claims, Leif Svalgaard and I were much more restrained in our opinions (…)
See also here
by H. Svensmark et al., December 19, 2017 in NatureCommunications
(…)In conclusion, a mechanism by which ions condense their mass onto small aerosols and thereby increase the growth rate of the aerosols, has been formulated theoretically and shown to be in good agreement with extensive experiments. The mechanism of ion-induced condensation may be relevant in the Earth’s atmosphere under pristine conditions, and able to influence the formation of CCN. It is conjectured that this mechanism could be the explanation for the observed correlations between past climate variations and cosmic rays, modulated by either solar activity or supernova activity in the solar neighborhood on very long time scales. The theory of ion-induced condensation should be incorporated into global aerosol models, to fully test the atmospheric implications.
See also here
by Dr. Shaviv, November 9, 2017 in ClimateDepot
(…)The body of evidence however clearly shows that the climate sensitivity is on the low side, about 1 to 1.5 degree increase per CO2 doubling. People in the climate community are scratching their heads trying to understand the so called hiatus in the warming. Where is the heat hiding? While in reality it simply points to a low sensitivity.
by Kenneth Richard, November 9, 2017 in NoTricksZone
Though advocates of the dangerous anthropogenic global warming (AGW) narrative may not welcome the news, evidence that modern day global warming has largely been driven by natural factors – especially solar activity – continues to pile up.
Much of the debate about the Sun’s role in climate change is centered around reconstructions of solar activity that span the last 400 years, which now include satellite data from the late 1970s to present.
by Hermann Harde, March 30, 2017 in Inter.J.Atm.Sciences
Including solar and cloud effects as well as all relevant feedback processes our simulations give an equilibrium climate sensitivity of = 0.7°C (temperature increase at doubled CO2) and a solar sensitivity of = 0.17°C (at 0.1% increase of the total solar irradiance). Then CO2 contributes 40% and the Sun 60% to global warming over the last century.
by M. Lockwood et al., April 2010, in EnvironmResLetters
Solar activity during the current sunspot minimum has fallen to levels unknown since the start of the 20th century. The Maunder minimum (about 1650–1700) was a prolonged episode of low solar activity which coincided with more severe winters in the United Kingdom and continental Europe. Motivated by recent relatively cold winters in the UK, we investigate the possible connection with solar activity. We identify regionally anomalous cold winters by detrending the Central England temperature (CET) record using reconstructions of the northern hemisphere mean temperature.
by F. Bosse and F. Vahrenholt, August 23, in NoTricksZone
The sun was completely free of spots on 11 days in July. Notable: while during last month the sun’s northern hemisphere was more active (in June all sunspots were in the northern hemisphere), last month the southern hemisphere was the most active part with 60% of the sunspots appearing there. The following diagram shows the course of solar cycle 24 thus far (…)
by Andy May, August 8, 2017 in WUWT
The Bray cycle is about 2450 years from beginning to end and the Bray Lows, which are the coldest portion of the cycle, are the most important events.
The world is currently within the Quaternary Ice Age and nearly as cold as it has ever been. The normal average temperature of the world is around 20°C, some 5°C warmer than today. To keep recent warming in perspective, it is important to understand that even if the worse predictions of the IPCC were to occur, we would only be returning to the average temperature of the last 560 million years
Phanerozoic Global Temperature from Scotese 2015,
link in the post (.pdf)
by M. Allan et al., July 11, 2017, in Climate of the Past
We present a decadal-centennial scale Holocene climate record based on trace elements contents from a 65 cm stalagmite (“Père Noël”) from Belgian Père Noël cave. Père Noël (PN) stalagmite covers the last 12.7 ka according to U/Th dating. High spatial resolution measurements of trace elements (Sr, Ba, Mg and Al) were done by Laser- Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS). Trace elements profiles were interpreted as environmental and climate changes in the Han-sur-Lesse region.
See also here
by David Archibald, July 11, 2017 in WUWT
This recent post was on the fact that the Sun’s EUV emissions had fallen to solar minimum-like levels well ahead of solar minimum. The implication was that the Solar Cycle 24/25 minimum was either going to be very deep and prolonged, or that Solar Cycle 24 would be very short, which in turn would be strange for a weak cycle.
by David Archibald, July 3, 2017
From a post a couple of days ago: “an F10.7 flux above 100 causes warming and below that level causes cooling.” Greg asked “Can you prove that?” I already had in this WUWT post from 2012. But it is worth revisiting the subject because it answers the big question – If all the energy that stops the Earth from looking like Pluto comes from the Sun, what is the solar activity level that corresponds to our average climate? Because solar activity is falling and climate will follow.
by P. Gosselin from F. Bosse and F. Vahrenholt, June 18, 2017
In May the sun was very quiet as sunspot number was a mere 18.8, which is only 36% of what is typical for the month this far into the cycle. Seven days saw no sunspot activity at all.
The following chart shows the current cycle, Solar Cycle 24 (red), compared to the mean of the previous cycles (blue) and the similarly behaving SC 5 (black).
It’s clear that the current cycle is significantly weaker than the mean and far weaker than the cycles we saw throughout most of the warming 20th century.
by Michigan State University, June 12, 2017 in ScienceDaily
Scientists at Michigan State University (MSU) show that examining the daily minutia of climate, not just temperature, but also sunshine, precipitation and soil moisture simultaneously all over a country gives a better understanding of how variable a land’s climate can be. That information is crucial when countries are setting policies aimed at growing food, protecting water supplies and the environment and stemming disease outbreaks. The findings were reported in this week’s Scientific Reports.
by Mike Jonas, June 10, 2017 in WUWT
In this article, I explore the scientific literature on possible solar indirect effects on climate, and suggest a reasonable way of looking at them. This should also answer Leif Svalgaard’s question, though it seems rather unlikely that he would be unaware of any of the material cited here. Certainly just about everything in this article has already appeared on WUWT; the aim here is to present it in a single article (sorry it’s so long). I provide some links to the works of people like Jasper Kirkby, Nir Shaviv and Nigel Calder. For those who have time, those works are worth reading in their entirety.
by Stephanie Osborn, June 7, 2017
I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet since late last summer, and here are the results, as of June 6th, 2017. (Quick and easy data source, the daily sunspot image archives from Solarham.)
This data (through March; I’ve updated it since then) was posted on Jerry Pournelle’s blog a while back, and it elicited several questions from readers, who didn’t understand the information contained therein. So here is an effort to elaborate on the data, for those of you who aren’t astronomers/ astrophysicists and don’t want to have to keep up with all this stuff.
by David Archibald, June 6, 2017 in WUWT
Solar cycle 24 has seen very low solar activity thus far, likely the lowest in 100 years. The F10.7 flux shows that over the last three and a half years the Sun has gone from solar maximum through a bounded decline to the current stage of the trail to minimum. Solar minimum is likely to be still three years away.
by P. Gosselin, May 28, 2017
In a joint US-German study, seven scientists recently tried to discredit the sun’s impact on climate. On April 19, 2017, Guoyong Wen and colleagues published a modeling study in the Journal of Space Weather and Space Climate, which suggested a maximum solar-dependent share of 0.1°C on the temperature development over the past 400 years. Here the scientists relied on the old, well-known trick of using the Little Ice Age as the starting.
by Tony Phillips, November 19, 2016
The sun has looked remarkably blank lately, with few dark cores interrupting the featureless solar disk. This is a sign that Solar Minimum is coming. Indeed, sunspot counts have just reached their lowest level since 2011.
by Meteorologist Paul Dorian, May 15, 2017
Today marks the 6th day in a row that the sun is blank and the 36th time this year – already more spotless days than all of 2016. In what has turned out to be a historically weak solar cycle (#24), the sun continues to transition away from its solar maximum phase and towards the next solar minimum.
by Kenneth Richard, April 27, 2017
Just in the last few weeks alone, another 20 scientific papers were identified which link solar variations to climate changes, which means 58 papers have already been published in 2017.
