There’s a story about solar cycle 25, and a potential “mini ice age” in the UK Daily Mail by David Rose that is making headlines today, even hitting the Drudge Report. The headline is:
Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years
The graph (from the Daily Mail article) below looks familiar.
From the story:
According to a paper issued last week by the Met Office, there is a 92 per cent chance that both Cycle 25 and those taking place in the following decades will be as weak as, or weaker than, the ‘Dalton minimum’ of 1790 to 1830. In this period, named after the meteorologist John Dalton, average temperatures in parts of Europe fell by 2C.
Readers may recall that WUWT had this story on January 25th via David Archibald: First Estimate of Solar Cycle 25 Amplitude – may be the smallest in over 300 years The graph he provided matches almost exactly.
He wrote then:
Using the Livingston and Penn Solar Cycle 25 amplitude estimate, this is what the solar cycle record is projected to look like:
And, yes, that means the end of the Modern Warm Period.
The Daily Mail article also says:
Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.
That’s essentially true, as we can see in this woodfortrees.org graph of HadCUT3 data.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997/trend
Of course, the linear trend line may be sensitive to the endpoints, and it has an ever so slight rise to it, but there’s no denying that that have not been peaks larger than 1997/98 which was an super El Niño event. The 2010 El El Niño didn’t come close.
When 2012 data is added, I suspect that trend line will be downward much like the trend for the last ten years:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/trend
The Daily Mail article continues:
However, it is also possible that the new solar energy slump could be as deep as the ‘Maunder minimum’ (after astronomer Edward Maunder), between 1645 and 1715 in the coldest part of the ‘Little Ice Age’ when, as well as the Thames frost fairs, the canals of Holland froze solid.
Yet, in its paper, the Met Office claimed that the consequences now would be negligible – because the impact of the sun on climate is far less than man-made carbon dioxide. Although the sun’s output is likely to decrease until 2100, ‘This would only cause a reduction in global temperatures of 0.08C.’ Peter Stott, one of the authors, said: ‘Our findings suggest a reduction of solar activity to levels not seen in hundreds of years would be insufficient to offset the dominant influence of greenhouse gases.’
These findings are fiercely disputed by other solar experts.
‘World temperatures may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more,’ said Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark’s National Space Institute. ‘It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.’
He pointed out that, in claiming the effect of the solar minimum would be small, the Met Office was relying on the same computer models that are being undermined by the current pause in global-warming.
The solar Ap geomagnetic index is the lowest in the record, and suggests the sun is lagging:
Nature (the reality, not the journal) will be the final arbiter of truth in this. We live in interesting times.
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Henry James said something like “To have a choice and not make it — is still a choice.”
These so called climate scientists have a choice – they could admit they don’t know much and just shut up.
Last week would have been a good time to have made that choice; or last year; or the year before that; . . .
Despite spending millions of pounds on AGW the UK is still at the same latitude as Labrador, what gives???? I don’t know what climatic events caused the LIA but the geological record suggests that they were not “a very rare and exciting event”
“Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past”. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become ”a very rare and exciting event.
yes we do live in interesting times hopefully interesting enough to put James Hansen ET AL out of work permanently.
To the extent that the proponents of AGW are also interested in the controls they think are necessary to tax and bend humanity to their whims, let’s not let them jump off the warming wagon and onto the cooling wagon to continue their need to control.
Has any body seen whatever it is the Met Office has published? I have had a quick look but the site was so slow I ran out of time. I really would like to know what the Met Office is saying and what is Daily Mail hyperbole.
John F. Hultquist says:
January 29, 2012 at 9:59 pm
“These so called climate scientists have a choice – they could admit they don’t know much and just shut up.”
No, there’s too much at stake for them. They have to stonewall it.
I can almost hear heads imploding over this. But hoping that Hansen et.al. will be out of work is silly, they’ll come up with some magical pixie dust formula that has the sprinkling of unicorn meat to prove to the world that this is wrong.
I’m happy to learn my grandchildren will know and experience snow after all, but they may be perplexed by the global warming taxes they will be paying and which were imposed before they were alive let alone old enough to vote.
Anyone know what kind of range a Chevy Volt gets in a December knee-deep cold snap? Battery fires might prove to be a blessing on a crowded turnpike.
On the topic of subsidized lifestyles, anyone care to venture a guess how long it will be before signs are posted for Diamond lanes requiring buses, 3 or more occupants, or electric and hybrid cars only?
Another interesting thing – with CO2 as a threat we could have adapted. With global cooling as a threat we’re going to have to consider mass migrations and reworking our shipping/container port strategy. Coastal and island aquifer lenses are going to draw down as sea level falls. Fishing fleets will need to relocate. It will take more than an old icebreaker and Russian tanker to feed fuel into Nome. It will be a bad time to live in Hawaii, a place very vulnerable to service interruptions and where everything essential for life comes in on a ship or a plane. They can turn off the pumps in New Orleans. Russia might want Estonia back. Canadian grain will be but a memory and any resistance to tar sand development will be quickly pushed aside. Bolivia will be vacated. Frakking will be mandated.
Is any of this a topic in town hall meetings in your area?
I’m just guessing, of course – kind of like Hansen does.
Interesting times ahead for sure. Dalton or Maunder minimum Take 2 versus the highest levels of CO2, methane, and N2O in at least 800,000 years. One thing for certain, one of the groups (warmist or skeptic) will have far fewer members by 2030, but the two psychologically different groups will no doubt have found some totally new topic to squabble about. Probably something to do with civil rights for robots or whether China has the right to claim territorial rights to Mars. This is a most exciting time to be alive!
If the Met really said that the cooling wouldn’t be significant they should be defunded. Their function is to help their government react to weather/climate and to minimize the potential harm of a serious cold trend is … incompetent at best.
Paul coombes says:
January 29, 2012 at 10:29 pm
Has any body seen whatever it is the Met Office has published? I have had a quick look but the site was so slow I ran out of time.
Ditto
So keep emitting that CO2 together
Raising the spirit of – green acres of crops
Politically we win though, climatically,
Here comes the sun
would be less harsh a fate for us.
The death of global warming is here as far as I can see. How can they defend 15 years of absolutely no warming? They keep claiming the world is practically on fire and the two biggest groups that advocated that warming was taking place release all the data showing there is none… that’s the end of any doubts whatsoever.
The science really is settled now my friends. Science trumped alarmism today and I believe they’ll have to go back to the drawing board now for the next new scare!
Paul Coombes:
It’s at http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2012/solar-output-research
It is very interesting that the results are based on a single climate model and this is described as research. There doesn’t seem to be much application of the scientific method in this “research”. But then the Met Office does “Policy relevant science”, so no surprise there.
More bad news for the ‘manmade global warming’ crowd. Sucks to be them.
;^)
Isn’t predicting the outcome of Solar Cycle 25 while we are still making our interesting way through 24 the equivalent of predicting a 6C rise in Global temperatures by the end of the Century on account of a trace gas in our Atmosphere?
Yours sceptically 😉
Dave
R. Gates – it would be best for all if your alarmist leanings were both based on science and a reality, but neither appears to be so. I’d rather the Met Office were right when they were banging the gong of global warming. I could deal with that. But now they’re jerking the clapper of global cooling and that’s going to be nasty.
As for the rest of your worries, I doubt non-leftists are going to be too preoccupied about robotic rights (they don’t exist and at least half the world doesn’t care) and extraterrestrial claims (they’re unenforceable and meaningless) won’t show up above the fold except as do crazy people who claim the world as we know it is ending. Bundle up. I wish it weren’t so.
Crazy in Seattle
Mashiki said: “hoping that Hansen et.al. will be out of work is silly”
Undoubtedly. Paul Ehrlich was wrong over and over again, and still has a considerable fan club, and public TV willing to do special episodes of Nature or Nova devoted to him. You can pretty much forget about debunking by mere facts.
They had this on the Australian Broadcasting science forum today, they nailed it early.
http://www2b.abc.net.au/science/k2/stn/newposts/5368/topic5368575.shtm
The coming decades cold will shut the AGW brigade up.
I can hear Pachbauri saying “we used the precautionary approach back then, becusese of the possiblility, which now turns out to be wrong, of dangerous warming, but this is how science progresses etc etc”. A long way down from the pedestal of “voodoo science”.
R. Gates:
If you have nothing to say, please, don’t.
Seal fur futures may turn out to be a worthwhile investment at this time. Ditto for coal.
Gah! When i was a nipper studying geology (and there was much less geology about in them days) only a few weird quaternary geologists did anything much about climate. Now everybodies interested in studying it … And we still haven’t a clue.
P.S. I realise its probably an oversight, but I’m a geologist (at least by first degree) and I’m still waiting for my cheque from big oil. If any generous oil companies need to contact me I am happy to furnish an address.
I note that at the Guardian they have decided to ignore this story, instead they are going on the attack against the UK Prime Ministers reluctance to attend the Rio+20 summit taking place in June.
Personally I fear for the Guardian when it allows articles such as the one published yesterday, just take a look at some of the infantile sentences that litter the article:
“The Rio Earth Summit +20 will be the most important environmental summit, certainly since the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009, and arguably since the first Rio Summit 20 years ago. President Obama is unlikely to be there as it is an election year and his Republican opponents regard anything to do with the health of the planet as a Commie plot”
The fact is that for this summit climate security is the final topic to be discussed:
The Financial Crisis
Food Crisis
Migration
Energy Crisis
Water Scarcity
Biodiversity and Ecosystem loss
Desertification
Natural Disasters and the ability to prepare for and recover from them
Achievement of the MDGs
Globalisation
Health Security
Increased resilience at the national and global level
Climate Security
The hyperbole on display within the environmental movement in the UK is truly astounding, for many people the article in the Daily Mail has reinforced their personal experiences that climate change has nothing to do with the earth, instead it is just another snake oil money making scheme.
Whatever else happens, the Thames in London will not freeze – not with massive power stations like Didcot pumping waste heat into it.