Our Current Minimum is More Maunder than Dalton

Is your graph based upon published numbers or Leif’s corrected numbers?

Whatever the outcome, I hope “Science” gets its act together and
never allows the statement “The debate is over!” to be heard ever again.

This current solar minimum may give a chance for Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Institute to test his theories regarding the effect of galactic cosmic rays on cloud formation as playing a role in climatology.
He postulates that, in this case, a decrease in solar activity would also reduce the solar wind would also lead to a decrease in the interplanetary magnetic field which acts as a shield for galactic cosmic rays. The decreased magnetic field would allow more galactic cosmic rays to enter the Earth’s atmosphere and induce more cloud formation due to the production of ions which act as nuclei for cloud formation. An increase in cloud formation would lead to a cooling cycle.
Svensmark’s current work is here:
http://www.space.dtu.dk/English/Service/Phonebook.aspx?lg=showcommon&id=38287&type=publications
While his work is not broadly accepted, it is an interesting theory nevertheless. His book, “The Chilling Stars”, is interesting reading.

How comparable are the three datasets ?
Were the technical means during dalton and maunder minima that accurate that they could deliver data that can compared with the actual data ?

After further examination, my uncle (who is also a meteorologist) and I came to a similar conclusion… rather than simply competing with the Dalton, this minimum may actually be on course to crush it. Also, other interesting research points to a potential Maunder-like minimum…
First of all, let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. Yes, Dr. Hathaway’s prediction for cycle 24 bombed, but just suppose he does have a good method (speed of convection currents) for forecasting 2 cycles out. He has gone on record as saying that he expects cycle 25 to be the weakest in centuries as the speed of convection currents has dropped off the bottom of his chart. So, in fact, Dr. Hathaway is really not that far removed from talking Maunder-like stuff himself.
Second, of course, is Penn and Livingston and the ongoing evident correctness of their observation that after 2015 visible sunspots will be quite rare indeed. Couple that with Leif’s prediction of a 2014 maximum for cycle 24 and things start to get very interesting indeed. It seems that cycle 24 may actually struggle to a very weak level then after that, almost nothing.
Of course, that is the greatest curse a Chinese person can give you, “May you live in interesting times.”
Regards to all,
Paul

Be afraid… be very afraid. This could be nature’s way of culling the human race. If indeed we are heading towards a Maunder type minimum, the die off of humans will be severe.

O’Rourke
makes a good point.
Dave may be comparing today’s trend to sunspot observations that were rough and arbitrary in the past.
How sure can we be of the sunspot numbers from a technically primitive era?
He may have a point here, but I feel he might be 6 months or a year premature. But certainly worth posting and reading.

Without getting into the science, I had felt skeptical about the impact of cosmic rays on cloud formation. In my experience, a rising column of air is doing to form a cloud with 100 percent certainty once the relative humidity hits 100 percent.
However if the cloud formation was facilitated by cosmic rays, then the rising air will more quickly heat up, causing a convective kick and a tendency to suck up more air from below. Although the amount of vapor in the atmosphere is likely to remain relatively constant, the extra air movement would facilitate convective heat transfer (at 180 W/m2 average, it wouldn’t take much fractional change to have a big impact), and any increase in those ephemeral clouds that come into being then dissipate will decrease the amount of solar energy reaching the surface.

@UK Sceptic “once it has been confirmed, this will kill warmist driven alternative energy policies stone dead?”
Since when have facts got in the way of Al Gore, or the AGW social-political religion in general? AGW will only be dead once they’ve found some other equally bad scare to replace it. (AGW replaced the AIDS hysteria, for which several decades of facts have proven their dooms-day predictions wrong.)

There were some meteorological errors in that movie, “The Day After Tomorrow”. I got stuck on a 14 hour flight from Houston to Narita with only Japanese movies with English subtitles or “The Day After Tomorrow”. I tried for 8 hours to watch the other movies, but even with the English subtitles it was a bit tough. Probably just a culture barrier. I finally threw in the towel and was left watching “The Day After Tomorrow” 3 times. Not bad as a story, but again, let’s just say it leaves something to be desired as a meteorology lesson.
Hurricanes (and Typhoons or any other name you can find) have a clear center because they are warm core. They actually end up being a high pressure system at high altitudes due to the hypsometric equation (how’s THAT for an inconvenient truth?). This causes the sinking air that forms the storm’s clear eye. Plainly, the storms they were depicting in “The Day After Tomorrow” were anything but warm core.
If you remember the scientist said when asked “Wouldn’t the sinking air warm?” and he replies it would, except it is sinking too fast. WRONG – if it sank faster it would warm faster. They only way it could avoid warming is for its pressure and volume to remain constant… about as likely as the North Pole becoming ice free next month. Air of any temperature sinking from the stratosphere would be much more likely to flash fry you than flash freeze you.
So, hopefully, we could shoot some holes in that as well if they started to use it. Interesting to get back in my field for a bit here. Since I’m employed by NOAA, I dare not comment on most of the weather related stuff here. It would be far too easy for what I said to be misinterpreted as the official opinion of NOAA, which it is not. I type what I think, and that’s all. This info is just from my meteorology degree.
Hope this helps,
Paul

On this and other blogs I have, from time to time, asked for evidence that the Dalton minimum period was in fact significantly colder than other periods in the 19th century. So far – nothing! None of the long term temperature records (apart from one, perhaps) indicate anything remarkable during the DM. A few tenths below the then average, perhaps, but nothing to write home about.
Actually, it’s not true that I got nothing back. There were a few pieces of anecdotal evidence. Most notable was the loss of Napoleon’s troops due to cold during the retreat from Moscow. Apparently, winter in Russia was cold during the Dalton Minimum. However, I don’t believe this is unique to the Dalton Minimum. I seem to think the Germans found it a bit parky in the early 1940s – a relatively warm period globally.
The DM picture is also confused by the level of volcanic activity including the massive Tombura eruption in 1815. But it’s also worth noting that on a polar expedition in 1817, William Scoresby Jr “noted a remarkable diminution of the polar ice” – a time when Britain was considering the possibility of opening up arctic sea routes.
So I’ll ask again. Is there any evidence that temperatures during the Dalton minimum (1790-1820) were significantly lower than the 19th century average. Here’s the CET record for starters
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/hadcet.html

John Finn UK Met office not a credible source me thinks due to its offficial AGW commitment… LOL.. anymore anyway.. used to be a very professional body about 20 years ago

My research in the mid 90’s showed that this upcoming minimum will be slightly stronger than the Dalton, as it was to Maunder and so on. And this rising pattern of the 180-200 year double Gleisberg Cycles will continue up until around 2500 AD. Then they start to decline in numerical value.
And I continue to like what I am seeing space weather wise in regards to my forecast for a June 2009 increase. Which is supposed to be the highest level of activity since March 2008.

We are absolutely seeing and counting spots today that would not have been seen or counted 350 years ago. Apples to apples, we appear to be Maundering.
What did Landechidt predict again? A Maunder or Dalton-type minimum?

The major reason will be starvation. Under a Maunder Minimum, there will be significant reduction in growing season in the northern latitudes. Countries such as Canada that are major food exporters would become food importers. There won’t be enough food to feed the masses.

ralph ellis 04:38:57
An excellent question. I agree with Richard de Sousa that we face a holocaustic die-off of humans if the cooling is dramatic and lengthy. The primary reason will be widespread crop failures, followed by plagues and wars. A mere 5% die-off of the human race is 350 million people. The first world societies cannot be completely insulated from the consequences of such a catastrophe.
Also, society is much more highly structured today than in the past. Consequences of cooling are all pretty speculative at this point except for crop failures, and of course, will depend on the magnitude and length of the cooling. We are an adaptable species, however, and may do better than I expect.
Leif 01:36:06
Sorry to bore you but I’d like you to go through something from another thread, again. In one thread I speculated that if the sunspots go away, and if there aren’t any other changes in the known manifestations of the solar dynamic, then any global cooling, barring volcanoes or anthropogenic albedo change, might be attributable to the lack of spots or some unknown manifestation of the sun. Your answer didn’t make any sense to me
==================================

There are two things that might or might not be connected, the cold, and the heat minima.
Once more one should emphasize that the game of correlating highs and lows in sun data sequences is thankless if there is not an underlying physical connection with the climate on earth.
It may be that there is a connection not discovered yet. In my opinion it would be something that changes albedo, like the proposed cosmic ray connection . I think we will have to wait through, to see if it is really a very low low we are living through , and if the cool persists even when the PDO flips to warm. Patience, this is a one off experiment and it takes a long time to develop.

Gotta…get…that…greenhouse…finished…

John Finn (04:26:11) :
…
So I’ll ask again. Is there any evidence that temperatures during the Dalton minimum (1790-1820) were significantly lower than the 19th century average. Here’s the CET record for starters …
Look at the graph you provided a link to. Think about what you’re seeing.
BTW, thanks for providing some evidence to disprove your own assertion.

I think we have to be careful about applying apocalyptic scenarios to reduced solar output. The world today is much different from even that of the 1930’s. Consider: In the ’30’s we saw pictures of hungry babies clutching to forlorn women. My enduring vision of this recession will be my trip a few weeks ago from downtown Houston to the airport there, stuck in traffic, fuming that I would miss my plane. That’s my takeaway from the recession described as ‘the worst since the Great Depression’.

As I have remarked before we certainly know that the Artic has shown sudden periods of melting lasting a deade or so and that there have been five such events since just before the American war. Since we do not know why I would hesitate to call this a cycle: I would prefer to say that the current period does not seem unusual.
I would also caution about CET data because although it is a very complete and indeed a remarkable record the area is small and on the edge of major weather systems and as a region during the DM was both densely populated and heavily urbanised. By the DM not only did the towns burn coal but the demand for coal for smelting iron was enormous and concentrated at the heart of the CET in the Black Country.
And it was not called the Black country for nothing as contemporary writers named it. At that date the blast furnaces had open throats and were very inefficient, the ore quality was poor and coking was done by the surface burning of soft coal so consuming three to four times as much coal per ton of pig iron than fifty years later when harder coals, richer ore, coking ovens and cone fed blast furnaces had beome the norm.
Urban heat Island effect? try industrial heat island effect.
Kindest Regards

evanmjones – Gilbert and Sullivan minimum! Great job! You did The Pirates of Penzance proud! Take a bow!

SC 24 and Epidemics !!!!
NPR yesterday interviewed Dr Peter Palese of Mt Sinai School of Medicine who has been studying the seasonality of influenza illness. He reports that at lower temperatures and absolute humidity, sneezed influenza droplets tend to float due to their smaller size. When temp and AH increase, the droplets get larger and fall to the floor and hence are less capable of causing an infection. The smaller size of the winter droplets also contributes to enhanced transmission by making it harder for the cilia of the lung to brush them out.
Given that David Archibald sees about a 2.1Degree Centigrade drop in mean temperatures in mid-latitude areas over the next decade, not only are we likely to see a big drop in agricultural productivity-30% for the Midwest US- but the extended winter season is likely to give us a greater exposure time to H1N1and H5N1and any other new pig-human-avian viri which are out there.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103910735
http://www.davidarchibald.info/papers/QuantifyingAgProductivityResponseSolarCycle%2024.pdf

UK Sceptic (01:40:29) :
“If what we are witnessing is the onset of a Maunder type minimum then surely, once it has been confirmed, this will kill warmist driven alternative energy policies stone dead?”
Are you sure? Given the insanity, and complete ignoring of the facts that I have seen over the past several years on our climate, I’m sure “Climate Change” would be renamed “Climate Chaos” and it would still somehow be seen as “consistent with” AGW theory. Since AGW theory cannot be falsified, then anything (even a bear s###g in the woods) is seen as “consistent with” AGW theory.
Like you I live in hope that ice on thames might cause a double-take with many, but given history, I’m certain the blind would ignore it – “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” etc.

evan
My kids were just in a musical, the pirates of Penzance(sp) an that diddu of yours made me laugh. thanks for the humor.
Cheers

The developing El Nino in 2009, and the possibility of another one following in it’s footsteps in 2010, does not bode well for a continual cooling of the earth as some have suggested. At least not like the drop in 2008 or in the near term.
Here’s what some need to consider with the sun-climate connection. This forcing relationship is built more around how the dice get loaded with certain oceanic and atmospheric teleconnections. And these relationships are related to the cyclical nature of different space weather variables and how they wax and wane.
So certain cycles will tend to exhibit different sets of variables and this is indirectly related to their strength and length. Which then makes the earth’s climate system behave differently. Hence different weather-climate patterns.

@ John Finn
Paraphrasing what Leif on this forum has said, weather records are often too noisy to be used as any kind of trend markers, I do know that the east coast of America was rather chilly during the Revolutionary War, what with Valley Forge and all… Thing is, turns out, it was colder in New York the year AFTER Valley Forge. 1779 was most likely the coldest winter New York has seen in some time.
Newsday has an article quoting from a (rare) book written by a guy who chronicled North American weather histories.
Long Island froze over to the extent that Hessian mercenaries defected by walking the 12 miles from Long Island to Connecticut. The ice between New Jersey, Staten Island, and Manhattan was frozen hard enough to allow a convoy of horses and cannon to be moved across the ice. (those with experience driving a car on ice would know what thickness of ice would allow for this)
While I’ll agree that correlation does not equal causation, I’ve noticed it’s difficult (but not impossible) to find significant cold records in times of high SSN.

For moment I thought I had surfed over to Climate Progress or Real Climate.
So much doom and gloom being predicted on so little evidence!
What Mr. Archibald presents is interesting, but it has some pretty big holes. While he acknowledges the biggest of those holes, many (too many?) of the posters seem to assume the holes either aren’t there or are insignificant.

vg (04:53:05) :
John Finn UK Met office not a credible source me thinks due to its offficial AGW commitment… LOL.. anymore anyway.. used to be a very professional body about 20 years ago
Are you saying they’ve fiddled the 19th century temperatures to show that the DM wasn’t particularly cold? Ok – find some other data which shows the cold Dalton Minimum.

Has anyone been monitoring the temperatures at Thule, GL? The temps have barely gotten above 20F and projected to be in the teens this week, With a short Summer season and the amount of ice expansion this winter, ice melt may be at a minimum.

Alex says:

I don’t want to be disrespectful, but I must agree with D. Archibald’s comment about Dr. Svalgaard dismissing the idea of solar driven climate, I have read numerous questions by lay-people and folks who are qualified and know their stuff and the Dr.’s answers do seem to brush it off as nonsense.

You know, it is funny, but a little thought reveals a few interesting things. For example, the power supply in my amplifier ultimately controls the volume at the speakers, but then again, there is a knob on the front of the amplifier that allows me to adjust the level, so who really controls the volume?
If the Earth’s climate system is as sensitive as many people claim to the teeny-weeny fluctuations in TSI I suspect we would not be here. A system with the hundreds of millions to billions of years of stability the system has shown does not react the way some people suggest it does.

It is such a pity that Landsheidt has passed, as I am sure these two gentlemen would bring and exchange some interesting points.
Matt N: Landscheidt predicted a Maunder-type minimum bottoming in +-2030.

The degradation of the English language as spoken in one of the former colonies is to be deplored. What did he pass? Wind? Oh, you mean passed away. I tend to have a problem with the incorrect use of adverbs as well.
It is interesting that much scientific progress seems to be made when the old guard passes away.

With the coming El Nino-with a cool pacific,-is there any indication of the involvement of increased South Pacific (i.e.Indonesia) Volcanic activity being a factor? Possibly undersea volcanic activity? Something that has been mulling around my head for years….
BTW I predict this is not going to be a very large Nino….
But I’m not a Scientist-just a speculator with a little,possibly
dangerous knowlege :-)..

I am still amazed at how few here focus on what our own highly variable atmosphere is capable of producing regarding long term trends. Here we sit on a globe that has far greater potential in terms of mechanisms for global cooling and warming that are completely natural, cyclic, solidly based in physics, and defendable. Yet we continue to focus on the minutia of “unknown” solar and barycenter mechanisms just waiting to be discovered and explained. It is the age old argument between “the first encountered pathology” and “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” found in medical dialogue.
Which brings me to a current train of thought regarding colder air but lots more snow and water equivalent in the mountains here in NE Oregon. Where is this moisture coming from if colder air means dryer air? I am following the trail of water vapor that is coming over us to see where it is sourced. It seems that the warm surface water that is being blown into the east part of the Pacific kicks out moisture into the atmosphere over the ocean and then swirls back towards the northern west coast in globby swirling bands which is loading the atmosphere with enough moisture to fall as wet snow as it is picked up by the jet stream. My hunch is that this will continue until the warmed concentrated waters packed against the eastern part of the Pacific have mixed with cold lower layers or expanded their heat. Eventually this source of moisture will dry up and we will start to experience cold without snow. My hunch is that this persistent very dry cold air will result in less summer melt of Arctic ice leading to an ice advance that eventually goes past the average extent.
I follow the trail of first encountered pathology. And spots or no spots will likely have such a small affect that the weather noise and standard error will completely obscure the effect of such a small solar influence relative to what the vast oceans are capable of producing.

Pamela-also things tend to dry out in the NW in an El Nino-in the winter.Interesting thought about the latent heat….

You can get an even higher-level overview of SSN activity in the naked-eye sunspot records.
Again, still done today. Think of it as a Maximum Smoothing Filter.
Here’s a little more food for thought:
For the last 250 years or more, science has been trying to answer the question of whether the universe is expanding forever or will eventually collapse in on itself.
You know that condenstation in the very early universe took place by expansion lowering the temperature state.
Look at Earth’s Ice Age record. Goes back to 4 billion years ago.
Does it say the Earth is cooling, or warming?
Does the Sun go up in the Main Sequence giving ever more output or is it the opposite?
Is the Universe expanding and therefore dropping the temp of Space Environment around Earth or is it contracting and raising the temp?
For one of the references on the Dalton, check out
‘A Perspective of Wages and Prices’ – Henry Phelps-Brown and Shiela V Hopkins
London, 1981 – pg 59

“Steven Kopits (07:06:15) : I think we have to be careful about applying apocalyptic scenarios..”
It’s the better part of wisdom, IMO, to not underestimate human inclination to superstition. Watch this video featuring Sallie Baliunas to see what has happened in a previous cooling period. I don’t have any evidence to think human nature is any different now. The only difference is we’d be seeing it live streaming on CNN or the internet :

jorgekafkazar:
Yes, in fact I was about to write “plage”, but then I thought that “plague” sounds more poetic and thus I decided to create a new word… Oh how Shakespearian of me…
Richard Sharpe:
“The degradation of the English language as spoken in one of the former colonies is to be deplored. What did he pass? Wind? Oh, you mean passed away. I tend to have a problem with the incorrect use of adverbs as well.”
Having trouble reading posts that have certain words cut out to prevent clutter and the creation of a boring, long thesis? Perhaps next time I shall spell out every single word, as it seems that not all have the ability to apply language skills to deduce that “passed” is a short version of “passed away”.
Before you criticise, I suggest that you polish your punctuation skills:
( “in TSI I suspect” –> in TSI, I suspect ).
TSI is not the only factor that can be discussed as having some effect.
In fact, it is more often the changes in the magnetic field that are of interest rather than TSI. I guess that my comments have been brushed aside by Mr. Sharpe as they do not fit the consensus that the idea of a climate driven largely by solar factors is a belief for amateurs, astrologers and people who have dreadful language skills. Oh well.

Where is there indication of an El Niño developing in 2009?
Apologies, Last paragraph should read : ” as they DO fit the consensus” … – my bad, LOL. 🙂

evanmjones (07:08:55) :
That poem looks like the quote of the week!

“DR (08:02:58) : Isn’t the internet great?”
Yes it is!!
And I am SO GLAD WattsUpWithThat exists!

Just Want Truth… (10:22:30) : We´ll see if Mrs.Baillunas “weather cooking”, through her withchcraft art produces the next “Super Solar Maximum” she has predicted. 🙂
Nowadays sorcerers and witches will be punished because of their “weather cooking” through taxation, ordered by the church of global warming, and their black pope Al.

For the benefit of a non science type, if we end up between a Dalton or a Maunder minimum and the earth actually cools are we talking about .5 degrees C or 5 degrees C? Should I start buying desert land in southern California or land in Guatamala? Don’t worry, I’m not really going to buy land. (yet… 😉 , I understand these are just predictions at this point, but if someone could contribute a translation for me, and probably others (this website receives a lot of hits), it would be helpful. I have reviewed many of the links on this website with more detailed descriptions, but it can be difficult to convert to layman’s terms. Thanks in advance.

Calling this minimum Maunder-esque is possibly a bit of an overreach. That would require forecasting several cycles hence. “Past performance doesn’t guarantee future returns”. We might have a relatively “normal” cycle in historical terms albeit weaker than recent cycles which have been unusually strong. It is just too early, in my opinion, to be calling for either a Dalton or Maunder kind of minimum.

@ Bob Montle (09:56:02) :
The climatic effects in 1816 are generally ascribed to Mount Tambora. 1816 was the “year without a summer” due to atmospheric obscuration. Check Wikipedia.
There is, of course, the hypothetical correlation of volcanic activity with the Dalton minimum.

“We know that the sun was responsible for climate change in the past, and so is clearly going to play the lead role in present and future climate change. And interestingly… solar activity has recently begun a downward cycle. Average global temperatures have dropped slightly over the past seven (now 8) years.”
–Ian Clark
-hydrogeologist and professor
-arctic specialist
-Department of Earth Sciences
-University of Ottawa

“1. The climate of the Earth depends on the interaction between the surface and the atmosphere, both of which are heated by solar radiation characterized by a cyclical, variable intensity. The climate is influenced by the Earth’s yearly revolution around the Sun, thermics, changes in ocean waters flow, air mass movement, mountain massif position, their uplift and erosion in time perspective as well as changes in the continents’ position as a result of their permanent wandering…. ”
~Geologic Science Committee – Polish Academy of Sciences
http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/PAS.htm
(h/t Benny Peiser, and Lubos Motl)

BlogForTech : “I cannot understand what this post is about. Care to elaborate more?”
I agree, perhaps we need a little bit more information/explanation. I don’t really think that these two graphs are convincing enough on their own…
With regards to the new PLAGE (plague!) on the sun, is there a record keeping of plages? Were plagues like this visible during the Dalton/Maunder minima? Looking at the images of the sun, it sure looks as if it is stirring, but there are no spots, so technically the sun would have been viewed as quiet back then right?… were these CMES common during the minima? Is there a way to tell?

According to ICECAP, the alarmists didn’t say anything when Alaska was experiencing temperatures much cooler than normal, yet when it gets above normal for a change they beat the AGW drum.
Also, the Southern Hemisphere seems to be cooling rapidly as a prelude to their winter here (maybe a prelude to a solar-induced severe Winter?)
http://www.intellicast.com/Global/Temperature/Maximum.aspx?location=ARSE0041
And here
http://www.intellicast.com/Global/Temperature/Maximum.aspx?location=ASXX0206
Other charts show the Middle East heating up like it does every summer, Siberia and northern North America staying on the cool side, the U.S. is seeing a mix of above and below normal temps, here in Wichita the week’s forecast should come to about average or maybe a little below.

Just read a book on the famous E=mc^2. Einstien’s 1905 “Special Relativity” paper was NOT peer reviewed. Merely reviewed by the editors of the journal it was presented in. It also had NO references or citations. (Although in following years various exchanges of letters and manuscripts left a fairly clear trail to point to the 10 contemporary physics “giants” on whose shoulders Albert was standing.)
It does give one pause about the current “fetish” with peer review.
MH

When I was young, a 3 day forecast was a big deal.
Now, we get 10 day and 2 week outlooks.
Just because we cannot now predict cycles into the future does not mean we will never get there.
Without a goal, there is no effort.
Of course, we could go back to the ancient ways of praying and offering sacrifice for bountiful harvest, and when it doens’t come we can all feel guilty, or get invaded & wiped out by those nations that did have enough to eat.
We could do that.
We could dump science as predictively useless and go back to idol worship.
I hope not.

Richard Henry Lee (23:32:38) :
IMHO Henrik Svensmark´s theory states that GCR will increase cloud formation through seed formation of drops, but the trouble is that when in a minimum seas are colder then there is less evaporation hence less humidity and less stuff for the GCR to work properly.

The problem with nothing ever changing is that it does.
It takes energy to sort and classify, and to establish order.
All that it takes is for a lack of energy for things to decay into lesser states.
So my question is: Are the times of Grand Minimum or Grand Maximum the times of greater order?

Just read a book on the famous E=mc^2. Einstien’s 1905 “Special Relativity” paper was NOT peer reviewed. Merely reviewed by the editors of the journal it was presented in.
(snip)
It does give one pause about the current “fetish” with peer review.

Let me expand on my previous comment a bit. Max Planck was (and is) one of the giants of physics. Einstein’s first paper, on the photoelectric effect, built on ideas earlier put forward by Planck. Einstein knew who edited the journal. Planck (nor any leading physicist of the day) wouldn’t *need* references or citations. Physics was very small at the time (a couple of hundred practitioners worldwide, perhaps? Robert Rhodes put forward a figure on that order in his Making of the Atomic Bomb).
So, true, peer review wasn’t formalized as it is today. That doesn’t mean that there was no peer review, it’s hard to imagine a tougher jury than Max Planck.
An analogy: small companies have internal review and decision making processes that typically are far more informal than you find in large companies. As they grow, processes tend to become formalized. That doesn’t mean that the company had no review process when it was small.
Likewise, the review process in physics was more informal when physics was being conducted by a small number of physicists who were, for the most part, personally acquainted with each other. If a paper appeared in Annalen der Physik, they knew it had been scrutinized by one or more leading German physicists, even if the process wasn’t formalized. Working physicists at the leading edge were intimately familiar with *all* of the important papers, thus the need for cites and references wasn’t strictly enforced.
Today, physics and other fields of science are so huge that it’s really impossible for any one person to become expert in all of the interesting research questions and areas, much less the literature. You don’t need a library index if your library only has a few dozen books, likewise physicists didn’t need explicit pointers to published work when the number of relevant papers in a particular specialty numbered in the dozens rather than the thousands.
To imagine that Annalen der Physik – leading physics journal of the day – would randomly publish papers without critical peer review, just because it was done informally back then – is simply wrong.

Right! It would help to actually provide the link: http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm

Abstract
—The problem of the use of such cosmogenic nuclides as14C and 10Be in natural archives for reconstruction of both the solar activity and the cosmic-ray intensity is discussed. The climate-dependent processes of the formation, transport, and deposition of these nuclides to Earth’s archives must be taken into account for
adequate processing of information derived from such archives.
“A comparison of the data series on the 10Be and 14C concentrations in Greenland and Antarctic ice and in tree rings, respectively, led to the conclusion that
these radionuclides are useless for retrieving the time histories of galactic-cosmic-ray and solar-activity parameters. This conclusion is analyzed below.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/9j5p5k4130014184/fulltext.pdf?page=1

evanmjones (07:08:55) :
It is the very model of a modern Maunder minimum
(I wanted to be plainer but I couldn’t find a synonym)
And thanks to modern media it’s not believed by anyone
The sun has done a bunk and we will freeze for a millennium
And so I’ll see you later; I am off for the equator
For is the very model of a modern Major-minimum

Very nice, I like it …but do you suppose Gilbert is rolling over in his grave?

Just Want Truth… (13:22:39) :
Perr-reviewed (for those who feel peer-review is a prerequisite, tough I do believe E=mc2 was never peer reviewed before publication 😉 )
“…..a supercenturial solar minimum will be occurring during the next few decades…. It will be similar in magnitude to the Dalton minimum, but probably longer as the last one.”
–Boris Komitov, Institute of Astronomy, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
&
–Vladimir Kaftan, Central Research Institute of Geodesy, Aerial Surveying and Cartography, Federal Agency of Geodesy and Cartography, Moscow, Russia
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=288314
and
http://www.astro.bas.bg/AIJ/issues/n9/BKomitov.pdf
Thanks for the referenced paper, it looks to support Usoskin & Solanki’s work and uses the “Schove Series” of solar reconstructions from approx AD300 – AD2000. The papers outcome supports a 200 year cycle of solar downturns.
How is the “Schove Series” sunspot reconstruction viewed by popular science?

Alan Wilkinson (20:22:15) :
As he replied when asked if Sullivan was still composing: “No, Madam, he’s decomposing.”
But I’m sure Gilbert could write a lovely satire on the AGW empire if he were still alive.

That would be poetry to my nearly deaf ears!

Leif Svalgaard (09:08:34) :
kim (05:35:07) :
In one thread I speculated that if the sunspots go away, and if there aren’t any other changes in the known manifestations of the solar dynamic, then …
Perhaps the problem lies in ‘go away’. If the magnetic field of the spot is 1510 Gauss the spot is visible and all the ‘other manifestations’ have a certain set of values. If the magnetic field is 1490 Gauss, all the ‘other manifestations’ have a certain set of values that are just slightly smaller [or for your hypothetical case not even smaller] than for the 1510 Gauss case, but the sunspot is no longer visible [has ‘gone away’].
That is fine with the exposition between visible and non visible. The truth is that during this year that I have been checking SOHO there are very few manifestations in any of the plots,not only the ones that should be seen as visible too. The sun is really quiet with an occasional blip, on the back burner, on all plots.
What limits does the quietness put on the magnetic field of the unseen by all , according to your above exposition, disturbances?
In a boiling pot if the temperature is lowered to no big bubbles there are the tiny tiny ones trying to coalesce and become big. Could there be such a discontinuity in the magnetic manifestations?
Or does your statement mean that the magnetic fields are like a structural backbone irrespective of temperatures of the plasma we depend on to measure with our instruments?

“Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change. Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind. Man\rquote s influence on nature is a drop in the ocean.”
–Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin
-Merited Scientist of Russia
-fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences
-staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute

Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin
http://www.bobbrinsmead.com/A%20cold%20spell%20soon%20to%20replace%20global%20warming.pdf

Leif Svalgaard (22:05:00) :
Michio Kaku,…. yes, solar activity affects the earth (including weather;) ).
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/10.30/15-solar.html

Leif Svalgaard (22:19:58) :
Thanks for he interest in Michio Kaku ;). He says “Let’s hope that it’s a dud…”
But I think you’re being sarcastic—am I right?
I see you are trying to associate him with the Mayan calendar—cheap shot, huh.

Huh, looks like Michio Kaku isn’t alone on the sun/2012 thing you bring up Leif :
funded by NASA :
http://standeyo.com/NEWS/09_Space/090326.space.storm.catastrophe.html
issued by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) :
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12507

Leif Svalgaard (22:33:18) :
. Again, I don’t quite catch your drift, as they say…
When some of us were very young and studious scientific lecture attendants, there was an Italian lady professor, whose name I do not recall because we nick named her “my questiiion iiis”, which was followed by a long not understandable question. So I am in the same position at late age :).
I think you have replied.
The plots we see in SOHO are snapshots of different temperatures depending on the type of molecule whose excitations are used to produce them. Since nothing is seen in any of them while you insist that the underlying mechanisms are still working I was wondering if there is a temperature dependence of the underlying mechanism of producing magnetic fields, to which you have replied in the negative.
I am also wondering whether the fact that we do not see these disturbances in the outer layers of the plasma means that there is a diminution in the field strength and how much. Your example gave very small percentages, and I was wondering if it is comparable to the diminution of TSI.

Geoff Sharp (20:43:19) :
Thanks for the referenced paper, it looks to support Usoskin & Solanki’s work and uses the “Schove Series” of solar reconstructions from approx AD300 – AD2000. The papers outcome supports a 200 year cycle of solar downturns.
How is the “Schove Series” sunspot reconstruction viewed by popular science?
Has there ever been studies to compare the Usoskin/Solanki/INTCAL98 data with Schove’s work?

Leif Svalgaard (00:27:43) :
Maybe you need a vacation Leif.
Watch this. Maybe it will cheer you up.

Richard Sharpe (09:09:23) (and others):
…teeny-weeny fluctuations in TSI… I’m sure this has been covered before. The temperate of the Earth is NOT ~14C. It’s ~287K. If there was no sun the temperature of the Earth would be the same as the temperature of the universe which is ~2.7K, ignoring internal heating.
So a TSI variance of 0.2%, ceteris paribus, gives a temperature change of (287 – 2.7) * 0.002 = 0.5686C. And that’s quite a lot.

“these radionuclides are useless for retrieving the time histories of galactic-cosmic-ray and solar-activity parameters”
I.e., useless for absolute dating, like that attempted here by our docent. Individual cycles are too brief, but groupings of some few?

“Assuming 2008 is the year of the minimum, the temperature value will be the mean annual temperature for the period 2003-2013 (i.e. 11-year mean centred on minimum).”
2009 will certainly be the year of minimum. Your mean will be 14 years, 2001-2015. Don’t center on features of a solar cycle, they’re not symmetric with respect to time.

DJ: Regarding this post you made yesterday, what prediction are you referring to ? Can you give me a link ? Are you referring to David Archibald ?
” DJ (14:15:23) :
Only one month to go until we verify David’s prediction made last year of a massive global cooling. On current numbers it will be – perhaps – the worst forecast in climate history.
PS we aren’t vetting are we?”
Many thanks.

kim 06:50:58
Leif, I believe that we are heading for a couple of decades of cooling from the cooling phase of the PDO. Let me amend my question above to ask what will be the explanation for cooling during a spotless time that extends into the next expected warming phase of the PDO. Now not only am I asking you to speculate, but for an even longer term. What fun!
==============================================

Adolfo Giurfa (19:04:55) :
Are you kidding?. All that CO2 cr… has been invented just to control society
Actually, all that has been apparent ever since the New Left found out that a minnow could be used to block industrial development. The rest is history.

Kim, if the PDO experiences an El Nino, the weather pattern variation affects are broadly predictable but mitigated on the strength, extent, and duration of the event. In warm/cool phases of the PDO, it isn’t that one or the other (La Nina vs El Nino) is excluded from occurring, it is that one predominates over the other along various measures: strength, extent, duration, predominance, occurrence, etc. Based on trade wind measures, and other oceanic oscillations currently in gear elsewhere, the PDO will likely remain in its cool phase as the predominate description. If an El Nino occurs during this cool phase, regional weather changes will result but the overall cool pattern will remain intact until such a time as the PDO flips to its warm phase, meaning the trade winds die down and stay that way, El Nino’s predominate, and surface waters warm where they stand.
In the cool phase of the PDO, the jet stream stays in a northern and loopy position, mixing Arctic air and left over warm ocean moisture together creating the conditions necessary for strong pressure gradients and warm/cold weather fronts colliding with each other and/or following on each others tail across the northern parts of the globe. In other words, warming during a quiet Sun is easily explained by natural conditions here on Earth.

There is one thing that will help us through this period we are entering.
Lot’s of cheap fossil fuels! Off Shore underwater drilling to tap into the methane deposits just off the continental shelves (technology/research needed). You know the ones that global warming was supposed to release 😀
Then again there is CLEAN COAL … where, in relative terms, only the life giving gas CO2 is released.
Maybe it will be enough to keep us from entering another period where the cold oceans sequestered so much CO2 (to limestone) it put terrestrial life under severe stress … something mentioned in the pro AGW, “Earth, the Biography”. … at least above the 250 ppm level before the Industrial Revolution where photosynthesis starts to shut down.

@ Jim Papsdorf
I believe David Archibald predicted in January that the May 2009 UAH MSU Global Temperature Result will be -0.4° (0.4° below the long term average).
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=197

Why is it so that a http://www.madscience.org/ AD has appeared on top of this David Archibald´s post?? What is it happening?

bill 09:15:59
There is a study that correlates aurorae with ancient Nile River levels.
==========================================

Leif Svalgaard (08:25:06) :
“In particular, if L&P are correct the concept of a Grand Minimum fades away, with all the upsetting consequences for those who depend on Grand Minima for their various correlations, e.g. LIA.”
The so-called ‘Grand minimum’ may fade away, but the ‘Visible Sunspot Grand minimum’ won’t!! Unless the sunspot data is edited or “corrected”!
But yes, I understand what you mean.
Are there any links to any recent L&P papers available online?

” Leif Svalgaard (09:04:10) : A good rule if one is annoyed is: “don’t feed the troll”. ”
Are you saying you were being the troll? I didn’t quite follow.

gary gulrud (05:04:41) :
“these radionuclides are useless for retrieving the time histories of galactic-cosmic-ray and solar-activity parameters”
I.e., useless for absolute dating, like that attempted here by our docent. Individual cycles are too brief, but groupings of some few?
Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Physics, 2009, Vol. 73, No. 3, pp. 378–380.
Solar Activity over Last Ten Thousand Years Based on the Data
Of 10Be and14C Cosmogeneous Isotopes
S. S. Vasiliev and V. A. Dergachev
Abstract
—The data on the 10Be accumulation rate in Greenland glacier (GRIP project) are discussed. Spectral analysis of the data over the last 9000 years is carried out. The spectral line intensity in the low-frequency range (periods from 100 to 1000 years) is much higher (approximately by a factor of 20), than in the frequency range
of the 11-year solar activity cycle. This fact suggests that the processes responsible for the variations in the10 Be production rate with a time scale of 100–1000 years significantly differ from those determining the 11-year cyclicity of solar activity
http://www.springerlink.com/content/29424621615w0272/fulltext.pdf?page=1
Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Physics, 2009, Vol. 73, No. 3, pp. 375–377.
Effect of Long-Term Variability of Galactic Cosmic Ray Fluxes
on Climatic Parameters
O. M. Raspopov , V. A. Dergachev , P. B. Dmitriev, and E. G. Guskova
Abstract
—Using of 200-year variations in solar activity and geomagnetic dipole changes in the time interval to 100000 years ago it is shown geophysical parameters effectively influence climate change. This effect is realized through modulation of the intensity of galactic cosmic ray fluxes penetrating the atmosphere.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/978wt4l6w5h1w433/fulltext.pdf?page=1

Jim Papsdorf here is the prediction – http://icecap.us/index.php/go/new-and-cool/prediction_of_the_may_2009_uah_msu_global_temperature_result/ .

Ron de Haan (16:35:34) :
Came to many of those same conclusions myself and have mentioned it a time or two but it is like telling kids things … sometimes you just have to let them find out for themselves. You can tell them until you are blue in the face but you can’t make them “get it” until they “get it” on their own.
For many, it will be when the event happens. As far as I know, no government on the planet has a plan on the shelf waiting to be enacted should something like a major volcano erupt that will impact a growing season. It is going to be a matter of everyone for themselves, I believe.

To Crosspatch regarding what will governments do in case of a major impact (presume reduction) to the growing season. I feel strongly that biofuels based on fuel crops is one of the most brutal, ineffective means of climate mitigation. Their greenhouse gas reduction is minimal yet their affect on grain commodity prices can be huge. I saw an aricle that had a totally different perspective however, he saw biofuels based on food crops as an insurance policy. If there was a sudden change in climat the limited growing seasons and crop production, you’d merely divert crop for fuel back into the food system. An interesting perspective.

crosspatch (16:49:43) :
Ron de Haan (16:35:34) :
“Came to many of those same conclusions myself and have mentioned it a time or two but it is like telling kids things … sometimes you just have to let them find out for themselves. You can tell them until you are blue in the face but you can’t make them “get it” until they “get it” on their own.
For many, it will be when the event happens. As far as I know, no government on the planet has a plan on the shelf waiting to be enacted should something like a major volcano erupt that will impact a growing season. It is going to be a matter of everyone for themselves, I believe”.
crosspatch,
We should increase food stocks under all circumstances.
As you know, a single volcanic eruption could cause a lot of trouble.
There are scientists stating that we are in for a big one at any moment in time.
As I said before, we have been very lucky during the last century.

Thank you for those that commented using temperature numbers. I’m still not quite sure what the impact of a Maunder Minimum is, but it seems that some are still thinking of the range of 2.2C if it’s a Dalton Minimum, as stated in Mr. Archibald’s March 2009 paper. (good paper, thanks). The April paper on US agricultural production is enlightening also, discussing a 20% reduction in US agricultural production in the case of a Dalton like minimum.
Ron de Haan your thoughts were interesting also. At first read, I thought that the potential negative outcomes on food production were a little far fetched. In the US we have a tremendous amount of land and water that could be used to grow food, that is either not used due to government rules or not productive enough to produce market competitive crops, but still productive enough to produce plenty of food. After all, land that supports grape vines can be replanted with potatoes at 6 C less. But on second thought, in the market place the value of food will be translated into money and while I living in the US will just pay more, people on the bottom of the food chain, in third world countries will starve again, like they did 30 years ago. Bummer that India developed nukes since then…

John W. (07:05:05) :

Look at the graph you provided a link to. Think about what you’re seeing.
I know what I’m seeing. Between 1780 and 1900, I see about 4 dips where the running mean drops to almost 1 deg below the 1961-1990 average.
Dip 1 starts in the late 1770s and appears to bottom out in ~1784. However, the weak Dalton cycles didn’t start until 1798, i.e. ~20 years after the initial drop in temperatures.
Dip 2 did actually occur in the Dalton period. It appears to bottom out in ~1816 or, to put it another way, one year after the 1815 Tombura eruption. It’s also worth noting that from ~1816 quite a strong warming trend kicks in – 7 years before the end of Solar Cycle 6
Dip 3 comes well after the DM. This seems to be a generally cold period which spans the late 1830s/early 1840s. (PDO/AMO – possibly?)
Dip 4 is actually more of a mini double dip which starts in the late 1870s and bottoms out in ~1885. If I were to speculate I’d go for PDO/AMO (i.e. ~30 years after 1840) followed by Krakatoa in 1883.
There is nothing unusual about the Dalton Minimum in the CET record. Other records give a similar message, e.g. Armagh, Uppsala etc. Dalton Cooling is a myth.

Geoff Sharp (00:41:29) :
Geoff Sharp (20:43:19) :
Has there ever been studies to compare the Usoskin/Solanki/INTCAL98 data with Schove’s work?
No takers?….maybe there is something here then, I might dig and see what I can come up with. If this record is good it will be another nail in the coffin for the Babcock believers.
Does anyone have a text file of Schoves work that can be entered into a spreadsheet?