Excerpts printed below, see full story here (h/t to David Archibald)
Anne Minard for National Geographic News
May 4, 2009 A prolonged lull in solar activity has astrophysicists glued to their telescopes waiting to see what the sun will do next—and how Earth’s climate might respond.
The sun is the least active it’s been in decades and the dimmest in a hundred years. The lull is causing some scientists to recall the Little Ice Age, an unusual cold spell in Europe and North America, which lasted from about 1300 to 1850.
…
But researchers are on guard against their concerns about a new cold snap being misinterpreted.
“[Global warming] skeptics tend to leap forward,” said Mike Lockwood, a solar terrestrial physicist at the University of Southampton in the U.K.
He and other researchers are therefore engaged in what they call “preemptive denial” of a solar minimum leading to global cooling.
…
Even if the current solar lull is the beginning of a prolonged quiet, the scientists say, the star’s effects on climate will pale in contrast with the influence of human-made greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2).
“I think you have to bear in mind that the CO2 is a good 50 to 60 percent higher than normal, whereas the decline in solar output is a few hundredths of one percent down,” Lockwood said. “I think that helps keep it in perspective.”
…
Changes in the sun’s activity can affect Earth in other ways, too.
For example, ultraviolet (UV) light from the sun is not bottoming out the same way it did during the past few visual minima.
“The visible light doesn’t vary that much, but UV varies 20 percent, [and] x-rays can vary by a factor of ten,” Hall said. “What we don’t understand so well is the impact of that differing spectral irradiance.”
Solar UV light, for example, affects mostly the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere, where the effects are not as noticeable to humans. But some researchers suspect those effects could trickle down into the lower layers, where weather happens
Gary I know the planet is cooling but you’ll have to wait until Hell freezes over before Anthony publishes my graphs which relate to that subject. 😉
tallbloke (12:55:51)
“[…] some complex systems have fluctuations which are neither random nor chaotic but can appear so until the causative elements and their interactions are understood.”
Another refreshing deviation from the pervasively-malicious, strictly-narrow linear-view that is undermining the sustainable defense of civilization – much appreciated tallbloke.
Leif Svalgaard (07:21:38) :
It is quite normal to have such asymmetry for a while. With time it will even out, as you can see here: http://sidc.oma.be/html/wnosuf.html
– Thanks Leif, I am still curious as to why we see this type of distribution. The Barycentre crowd seem to think the planets cause this effect. Although I’m not convinced.
Ozzie John (14:55:37) :
– Thanks Leif, I am still curious as to why we see this type of distribution. The Barycentre crowd seem to think the planets cause this effect. Although I’m not convinced.
The dynamo crowd thinks there are two dynamos, one in each hemisphere that are only loosely coupled [e.g. by being fed polar fields that are approximately equal]. It is then not a mystery why there should be asymmetry. It would, in fact, be a mystery [miracle?], if there were no asymmetry.
I think the greatest thing about new discoveries is not that a correlation was found and then years spent looking for a mechanism, but that a brilliant mind nearly simultaneously saw a mechanism and then spent extraordinary amounts of time studying the mechanism. And the thing that fascinates me about the discovery is that it was (or is) rather simple, easily verifiable and unromantic. Like it was right before our eyes all the time but we kept studying and worshiping the goddess and her uncanny ability to make the Sun rise every morning because she started a sacred fire on the alter at just the right time but only if we brought sacrifices. With that rather silly vision in my head, I am geared more towards looking for obvious and strong mechanisms that are simple, nearby, traceable, robust, and easily verifiable. IE, not rocket science. More like 5th grade science.
Some here are a bit rankled that I disregard the Sun as if it means nothing to temperature variation. Let me explain. To be clear, when I post about long term weather pattern variation, I am talking about the noisy trends up and down over decades and more. The affects of CO2 and the Sun are buried in this noise and therefore I pay it little mind. That is not to say that I think there is no affect. There is. It is very, very small. It may not even be accurately measurable given the limits of measuring devices. Regardless, I am not interested in the small stuff with all the noise removed. I am interested in the noise. The spikes up and down. The rickety stair steps this way and that. The Sun and my breath just cannot be the source of such cacophony. Something else, just as noisy, but one that plays its hand before land is affected by weather pattern changes, is at work here.
So I am working my way backward. Kind of like following the trail of today’s weather back to its source. Climate change (what I call long term weather pattern variation) and today’s weather share quite a bit of, shall we say, genes. Like kissing cousins. So what drives one may also drive the other. KISS.
Re: Pamela Gray (18:53:56)
Thank you for sharpening our view of your reasoning. With the improved insight, if anything appears omitted, it is rhythm.
Just Want Truth… (21:53:29) :
Also on Chu and the Hockey Stick (sounds like a 70’s tv show) :
Reminded me of a “rock band” on Sooby Doo!
Ozzie John (14:55:37) : The Barycentre crowd seem to think the planets cause this effect. Although I’m not convinced.
OOoooo…. Someone mentioned The Shiny Thing!!!
When you have reasonably strong correlation between some things it’s fairly reasonable to go looking for causal mechanisms. Not finding them in a short time is not a falsification, it is only a statement about the way that nature is sometimes a bit hard to sort out…
There are a couple of plausible ways that the planets can impart an influence. Unfortunately, its hard to do an experiment to test their actions and harder still to spot what you’ve missed in the theories…
So at present it’s a bit of a standoff. Lots of interesting Shiny Things, not much substance under the glitter. (but nothing else looking much shinier either …)
Fred Souder (04:34:38) :
I am not talking about specialized events within the interglacial, such as the dryass, I am talking about the glacial advances at the onset of the next glaciation. These should happen very slowly, not in a period of a couple decades.
OK. The next glaciation does have slow onset, but with a fair number of wobbles, if it’s like past glaciations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png
has an ice volume at the bottom of the chart (inverted sign, though) but you can see that the ice volume increases slowly and steadily over roughly the whole 100,000 year glaciation. Yeah, I’d call that slow…
tallbloke,
Thanks for the supporting analysis, it does indeed look as if the tidal influences correlate to sunspot area.
Now some might ask why it matters which hemisphere has the most sunspot area at solar maximum. Off the top of my head, I would venture to guess that since the Sun is moving about the galaxy in line with the suns axis, that the northern hemisphere’s output heads INTO the ‘wind’ of interstellar gasses, the bowshock of the heliopause is much closer to earth in the north, while the southern hemisphere’s output goes to the tail. A stronger northern hemisphere output would push the bowshock further away from the solar system, and decrease cosmic rays hitting the northern hemisphere of Earth. A weaker northern solar hemisphere would allow the bowshock to come closer and allow more cosmic rays in at solar maximum.
As we know cosmic rays have a handle in cloud formation, and the bulk of the warming is in the northern hemisphere, there seems to be potential for some causation here.
This is definitely interesting I’m not a scientist however, I’ve seen and read enough to think global warming is a hoax at least do to excessive CO2. I read something explaining that the Medieval time were really hot. I also recall some talk about the sun’s relationship to the temperture also. They just kept explaining that ice core samples were not agreeing with what was being presented to the public.
It’s always interesting to see how people who disagree with AGW are called skeptics where as proponents are referred to as “experts” or “scientists” or “researchers”.
Guess it’s all part of the propaganda plan for the left. Separate your opponent from “science”, and then paint him/her as anti-science when he disagrees with you.
That’s not what I’m saying at all. When the dinosaurs roamed the earth the entire place was way warmer than it is now, and like you said, has also been far, far colder than it is now. Do I think that the entire things is man made? Of course not, but I have seen examples on here of people saying that nothing is happening, everything is hunky-dory and that makes me angry. The climate IS changing and it is at least partially our fault (long-term Co2 records and temperature readings, mostly from tree-ring and ice-core analysis have proven this to as close to perfection as we can get).
So yes, I will absolutely stand by my assertion that people who do not see that things are changing have their heads in the sand, because one would have to be blind, as well as not having any other senses, not to see it.
Sunspots and solar activity do not just “Ramp Up” rapidly. It takes a while, but the fact that the sun is getting more active than it has been recently COULD signal a switch, that’s all I’m saying.
🙂
-J-