THE DEMISE OF SUNSPOTS—DEEP COOLING AHEAD?
Don J. Easterbrook, Professor of Geology, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA
The three studies released by NSO’s Solar Synoptic Network this week, predicting the virtual vanishing of sunspots for the next several decades and the possibility of a solar minimum similar to the Maunder Minimum, came as stunning news. According to Frank Hill,
“the fact that three completely different views of the Sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation.”
The last time sunspots vanished from the sun for decades was during the Maunder Minimum from 1645 to 1700 AD was marked by drastic cooling of the climate and the maximum cold of the Little Ice Age.
What happened the last time sunspots disappeared?
Abundant physical evidence from the geologic past provides a record of former periods of global cooling. Geologic records provide clear evidence of past global cooling so we can use them to project global climate into the future—the past is the key to the future. So what can we learn from past sunspot history and climate change?
Galileo’s perfection of the telescope in 1609 allowed scientists to see sunspots for the first time. From 1610 A.D. to 1645 A.D., very few sunspots were seen, despite the fact that many scientists with telescopes were looking for them, and from 1645 to 1700 AD sunspots virtually disappeared from the sun (Fig. 1). During this interval of greatly reduced sunspot activity, known as the Maunder Minimum, global climates turned bitterly cold (the Little Ice Age), demonstrating a clear correspondence between sunspots and cool climate. After 1700 A.D., the number of observed sunspots increased sharply from nearly zero to more than 50 (Fig. 1) and the global climate warmed.
The Maunder Minimum was not the beginning of The Little Ice Age—it actually began about 1300 AD—but it marked perhaps the bitterest part of the cooling. Temperatures dropped ~4º C (~7 º F) in ~20 years in mid-to high latitudes. The colder climate that ensued for several centuries was devastating. The population of Europe had become dependent on cereal grains as their main food supply during the Medieval Warm Period and when the colder climate, early snows, violent storms, and recurrent flooding swept Europe, massive crop failures occurred. Winters in Europe were bitterly cold, and summers were rainy and too cool for growing cereal crops, resulting in widespread famine and disease. About a third of the population of Europe perished.
Glaciers all over the world advanced and pack ice extended southward in the North Atlantic. Glaciers in the Alps advanced and overran farms and buried entire villages. The Thames River and canals and rivers of the Netherlands frequently froze over during the winter. New York Harbor froze in the winter of 1780 and people could walk from Manhattan to Staten Island. Sea ice surrounding Iceland extended for miles in every direction, closing many harbors. The population of Iceland decreased by half and the Viking colonies in Greenland died out in the 1400s because they could no longer grow enough food there. In parts of China, warm weather crops that had been grown for centuries were abandoned. In North America, early European settlers experienced exceptionally severe winters.
So what can we learn from the Maunder? Perhaps most important is that the Earth’s climate is related to sunspots. The cause of this relationship is not understood, but it definitely exists. The second thing is that cooling of the climate during sunspot minima imposes great suffering on humans—global cooling is much more damaging than global warming.
Global cooling during other sunspot minima
The global cooling that occurred during the Maunder Minimum was neither the first nor the only such event. The Maunder was preceded by the Sporer Minimum (~1410–1540 A.D.) and the Wolf Minimum (~1290–1320 A.D.) and succeeded by the Dalton Minimum (1790–1830), the unnamed 1880–1915 minima, and the unnamed 1945–1977 Minima (Fig. 2). Each of these periods is characterized by low numbers of sunspots, cooler global climates, and changes in the rate of production of 14C and 10Be in the upper atmosphere. As shown in Fig. 2, each minimum was a time of global cooling, recorded in the advance of alpine glaciers.
The same relationship between sunspots and temperature is also seen between sunspot numbers and temperatures in Greenland and Antarctica (Fig. 3). Each of the four minima in sunspot numbers seen in Fig. 3 also occurs in Fig. 2. All of them correspond to advances of alpine glaciers during each of the cool periods.
Figure 4 shows the same pattern between solar variation and temperature. Temperatures were cooler during each solar minima.
What can we learn from this historic data? Clearly, a strong correlation exists between solar variation and temperature. Although this correlation is too robust to be merely coincidental, exactly how solar variation are translated into climatic changes on Earth is not clear. For many years, solar scientists considered variation in solar irradiance to be too small to cause significant climate changes. However, Svensmark (Svensmark and Calder, 2007; Svensmark and Friis-Christensen, 1997; Svensmark et al., 2007) has proposed a new concept of how the sun may impact Earth’s climate. Svensmark recognized the importance of cloud generation as a result of ionization in the atmosphere caused by cosmic rays. Clouds reflect incoming sunlight and tend to cool the Earth. The amount of cosmic radiation is greatly affected by the sun’s magnetic field, so during times of weak solar magnetic field, more cosmic radiation reaches the Earth. Thus, perhaps variation in the intensity of the solar magnetic field may play an important role in climate change.
Are we headed for another Little Ice Age?
In 1999, the year after the high temperatures of the 1998 El Nino, I became convinced that geologic data of recurring climatic cycles (ice core isotopes, glacial advances and retreats, and sun spot minima) showed conclusively that we were headed for several decades of global cooling and presented a paper to that effect (Fig. 5). The evidence for this conclusion was presented in a series of papers from 2000 to 2011 (The data are available in several GSA papers, my website, a 2010 paper, and in a paper scheduled to be published in Sept 2011). The evidence consisted of temperature data from isotope analyses in the Greenland ice cores, the past history of the PDO, alpine glacial fluctuations, and the abrupt Pacific SST flips from cool to warm in 1977 and from warm to cool in 1999. Projection of the PDO to 2040 forms an important part of this cooling prediction.
Figure 5. Projected temperature changes to 2040 AD. Three possible scenarios are shown: (1) cooling similar to the 1945-1977 cooling, cooling similar to the 1880-1915 cooling, and cooling similar to the Dalton Minimum (1790-1820). Cooling similar to the Maunder Minimum would be an extension of the Dalton curve off the graph.
So far, my cooling prediction seems to be coming to pass, with no global warming above the 1998 temperatures and a gradually deepening cooling since then. However, until now, I have suggested that it was too early to tell which of these possible cooling scenarios were most likely. If we are indeed headed toward a disappearance of sunspots similar to the Maunder Minimum during the Little Ice Age then perhaps my most dire prediction may come to pass. As I have said many times over the past 10 years, time will tell whether my prediction is correct or not. The announcement that sun spots may disappear totally for several decades is very disturbing because it could mean that we are headed for another Little Ice Age during a time when world population is predicted to increase by 50% with sharply increasing demands for energy, food production, and other human needs. Hardest hit will be poor countries that already have low food production, but everyone would feel the effect of such cooling. The clock is ticking. Time will tell!
References
D’Aleo, J., Easterbrook, D.J., 2010. Multidecadal tendencies in Enso and global temperatures related to multidecadal oscillations: Energy & Environment, vol. 21 (5), p. 436–460.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2000, Cyclical oscillations of Mt. Baker glaciers in response to climatic changes and their correlation with periodic oceanographic changes in the Northeast Pacific Ocean: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, vol. 32, p.17.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2001, The next 25 years; global warming or global cooling? Geologic and oceanographic evidence for cyclical climatic oscillations: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, vol. 33, p.253.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2005, Causes and effects of late Pleistocene, abrupt, global, climate changes and global warming: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, vol. 37, p.41.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2006, Causes of abrupt global climate changes and global warming; predictions for the coming century: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, vol. 38, p. 77.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2006, The cause of global warming and predictions for the coming century: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, vol. 38, p.235-236.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2007, Geologic evidence of recurring climate cycles and their implications for the cause of global warming and climate changes in the coming century: Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, vol. 39, p. 507.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2007, Late Pleistocene and Holocene glacial fluctuations; implications for the cause of abrupt global climate changes: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, vol. 39, p.594
Easterbrook, D.J., 2007, Younger Dryas to Little Ice Age glacier fluctuations in the Fraser Lowland and on Mt. Baker, Washington: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, vol. 39, p.11.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2007, Historic Mt. Baker glacier fluctuations—geologic evidence of the cause of global warming: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, vol. 39, p. 13.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2008, Solar influence on recurring global, decadal, climate cycles recorded by glacial fluctuations, ice cores, sea surface temperatures, and historic measurements over the past millennium: Abstracts of American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting, San Francisco.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2008, Implications of glacial fluctuations, PDO, NAO, and sun spot cycles for global climate in the coming decades: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, vol. 40, p. 428.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2008, Correlation of climatic and solar variations over the past 500 years and predicting global climate changes from recurring climate cycles: Abstracts of 33rd International Geological Congress, Oslo, Norway.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2009, The role of the oceans and the Sun in late Pleistocene and historic glacial and climatic fluctuations: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, vol. 41, p. 33.
Eddy, J.A., 1976, The Maunder Minimum: Science, vol. 192, p. 1189–1202.
Hoyt, D.V. and Schatten, K.H., 1997, The Role of the sun in climate change: Oxford University, 279 p.
Svensmark, H. and Calder, N., 2007, The chilling stars: A new theory of climate change: Icon Books, Allen and Unwin Pty Ltd, 246 p.
Svensmark, H. and Friis-Christensen, E., 1997, Variation of cosmic ray flux and global cloud coverda missing link in solar–climate relationships: Journal of Atmospheric and SolareTerrestrial Physics, vol. 59, p. 1125–1132.
Svensmark, H., Pedersen, J.O., Marsh, N.D., Enghoff, M.B., and Uggerhøj, U.I., 2007, Experimental evidence for the role of ions in particle nucleation under atmospheric conditions: Proceedings of the Royal Society, vol. 463, p. 385–396.
Usoskin, I.G., Mursula, K., Solanki, S.K., Schussler, M., and Alanko, K., 2004, Reconstruction of solar activity for the last millenium using 10Be data: Astronomy and Astrophysics, vol. 413, p. 745–751.
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UPDATE: Bob Tisdale has posted a rebuttal. Here is what he has to say via email.
Hi Anthony: The following is a link to my notes on the Easterbrook post:
We should have progressed beyond using outdated TSI datasets, misrepresenting the PDO, and creating bogus global temperature graphs in our arguments against AGW.
I’ve advised Easterbrook, and we’ll see what he has to say – Anthony
Found the “starting treitise” which helped motivate Svensmark.
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19790012790_1979012790.pdf
Complete download of a 400 page book!
Good empirical work. What Svensmark has done is to:
1. Run his own experiments (“Sky” experiments, in the basement of his building in Denmark, using a modified “Wilson Cloud Chamber”…using water, not Ethanol)
2. Produced the elegant paper (Oct 2009 I believe) linking Forebush decreases in Cosmic rays (caused by massive solar flares, creating a temporary peak in solar wind), showing a clear correllation in decrease in cloud cover (by about 14%, HUGE!) with a 5 day lag time on the bottom of the Forebush decrease.
3. Stimulated the $40,000,000 CERN “Cloud” experiments, about which we only know THEY HAVE BEEN DONE, and we are eagerly awaiting the reports.
It is interesting that Wilson orginally invented the Cloud chamber, specifically to study the formation conditions for CLOUDS. When the world became aware of ionizing radiation from radioactive substances, Wilson wondered what they would do to the clouds in his cloud chamber. Turns out that they showed nice little trails of CONDENSATION of “saturated vapor” along the run of the ionizing species. Cloud chambers began to be used to monitor Cosmic rays. Prior to Crockoft and Watson’s development of the modern accelerator, clound chambers on the ground and in balloons were the first method of doing “high energy particle physics”. Wilson was given the Noble prize in Physics in 1927 for the Cloud Chamber.
So now we come FULL CIRCLE, matching the largest accellerators in the world, with the largest CLOUD chamber. Not for “particle physics”, but more the physics of particles. I.e., condensation particles. And the end result goes back to what Wilson originally was interested in: Formation of clouds!
Thank you Dr. Wilson. And thank you Dr. Svensmark.
The science behind the projected cooling is as flaky as the science behind AGW except for one thing. The PDO modes do coincide with rises and falls in apparent global temperatures and the Atlantic MO does appear to have a cycle but not very marked. IF the sun is a major contributor to climate change, and I’m prepared to think it might be, then one might argue that any drop in temperatures in the future should provide some indication of the significance of CO². Sadly it won’t because the ‘input parametres’ are never the same for each phase change in the climate drivers and as a result we will never be able to DEFINITIVELY say that CO² equals xx.x°C/ppm. Thus the alarmist corporations will be able to force their believe systems and taxes upon. In France, I have suggested that will wheel out the guillotine one more time starting in Brussels and working our way back to Paris.
By the way, this brand new study:
http://www.adn.com/2011/06/16/1921104/arctic-ice-melting-faster-than.html
Would seem to put yet one more kink in Dr. Eastbrook’s contention that we’ve seen a “gradually deepening cooling” since 1998, as the last 5 years since 2005 have been the warmest in 2000 years in the Arctic. I’d love to hear his explanations as to why this would be if we’ve supposedly seen a “gradually deepening cooling” since 1998. Of course, a warming arctic is one of the early indicators of AGW, according to every global climate model.
R. Gates says:
June 17, 2011 at 10:40 am
How is stating a fact, a scare tactic?
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No one’s falling for it………………………….
HenryP says:
June 17, 2011 at 9:02 am
I think we can survive another little ice age… I think it is just a matter of us making sure that earth will not get “too white” (no racist pun intended). We can do that in the same way as they are removing snow in the nordic countries (salt) or employiing more and better laser beam technology directed to melt snow layers in areas where there are largely thin layers of snow (by using aeroplanes)
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That would have very little impact on growing seasons or desertification. Those issues would still exist, millions if not billions would perish. We live in a very populated world with JIT supply chains. There is no buffer.
Thanks for the link Smokey, really, I find Daly’s thinking very interesting, but it seems the facts would not be falling in line with what he was saying. The Arctic would seem to warmer over the past 5 years than any time in the past 2000:
http://www.adn.com/2011/06/16/1921104/arctic-ice-melting-faster-than.html
If this is the case, it is not hard at all to understand why the sea ice would be running so low.
You said my mind is “made up”. This is absolutely not true. I will look at any scientific data I’m supplied. For example, I am anxiously awaiting the next paper related to the CLOUD experiments from CERN.
Ged says:
June 17, 2011 at 1:04 pm
Considering Arctic temperatures are following right along the normal line, it’s hard to say why there is as much melting as there is, as temp isn’t increasing over previous years. http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_2011.png
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Ged, my ‘guess’ would be water. Since most of the ice is under water. Very little to do with air temperature and a lot to do with the North Atlantic Current and wind.
Ya Smokey
here is also what Daly wrote
“Put simply, the ice area today is scarcely different to what it was in 1979. ”
yup. falsified, he is.
Kev-in-Uk
Don has used two different TSI datasets. After looking at 11 different versions over at Lucias ( helping with a programming issue) its clear to me that easterbrook is being very misleading in his selection of TSI.
I would expect to see Willis come into this thread and start to take it to pieces, bob tisdale beat him to it.
youre impressed by the “correlation” however that correlation is driven by the choice of a TSI data set.
It’s easterbrooks version of bristlecone pines.
R. Gates. I bet we go lower than 2007 with ice this year.
whadda u think
Jim Cripwell says:
Recent studines indicate that the Black Death was caused by a virus like Ebola.
Jim, I have never heard that before – can you point me to any of those studies?
I also like the way nobody questioned the temperature data that correlates so well with the wrong TSI data.
when somebody presents a temperature record that people here think is FULL of UHI, and correlates it with the wrong TSI data, Nobody, ( smokey? willis? ) calls that into question. Hey maybe sunspots are related to UHI?
“And you can provide solid specific data (rather than conjecture) of when it’s been lower in recorded history? Please show me that data. I’d love to see it.”
—
Doesn’t work that way. You are the one claiming that current ice levels are the lowest ever. You need to back up your claim.
“The arctic is warming Murray…all the data tell us that, and to believe different is to believe something that is in error.”
—
The arctic warmed the last time the PDO was in it’s warm phase. Then the cold phase came along and it cooled back down.
If the sun does go into a prolonged period of no or very little sunspots, this I believe will be a great test to see who is right regarding sunspots, CO2, warming, climate, etc.
Leif or others would have caught it. The minute I read his first chart (modified from eddy) my BS meter was
tripped.. Modified? how. So that just made me on alert to check and compare graphs.
http://www.adn.com/2011/06/16/1921104/arctic-ice-melting-faster-than.html
None of the icecore data shows recent decades warmer then any during the last 2000 years.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/greenland/greenland.html
So that leaves the last 2000 years based on only tree rings and lake sediments.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/paleolim/paleolim_data.html
None of the lake sediments based in the Arctic shows recent decades warmer than any during the last 2000 years.
So the leaves just tree rings. (say no more)
@R. Gates
I posted you a link to the actual temperatures. Where is this warming you are saying would be there? Furthermore, why the Arctic and not the Antarctic? The data is not showing a rapid warming, at least no data I see, it’s completely along the normal line. If there is actual data, please post it like I posted some, instead of telling me what the data disagrees with (and then making knocks against political beliefs. You know nothing about my beliefs in any way, shape, or form)
As Latitude pointed out, water temp is the only thing that makes sense; and water temp will be controlled by circulation patterns of the oceans (since, again, AIR TEMP is holding along the normal average line, and thus cannot explain what we are seeing).
Thanks for the good work. I’ve now got a much better feel for the potential of another Maunder Minimum. As usual, if you listen to the idiots who call themselves “climate scientists”, all you get is platitudes and “trust us we’ve experts”.
I much prefer the estimates of effects based on analysis of real evidence.
But — can I just say, that global warming is beginning to look very attractive!
steven mosher says:
June 17, 2011 at 2:06 pm
Yes, I see your point after looking at Leifs reconstructions page. Hoyts data is wildly variable compared to many others.
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI%20(Reconstructions).xls
but even Leif’s reconstruction reflects the lower TSI in the Dalton quite clearly for example – so surely, the general correlation is there?
I have not bothered to look research into TSI much – to be honest – just accepted the 0.1% stated TSI ‘variance’ as accepted – which funnily enough looks like its not much more than that in Leifs reconstruction!
I personally do not believe TSI variance is likely to be so restricted (to 0.1%) – but without long term modern data, it really is not possible to prove one way or the other in my opinion. However, accounting for previous large scale climatic variation (ignoring volcanoes, etc,) and taking a pragmatic view – it seems logical that the sun must have had some signifcant influence!!
Mosh, what’s the mass of the ice projected to melt? I’m just curious how much cooling that would cause.
Black death, etc. How correlated are major viral pandemics with cooling, solar activity?
I seem to recall reading recently (maybe here) that many important viruses spread best when water vapor content and temperature are low. If these diseases are high after high volcanic activity and possible solar cloud effects, it would suggest that there’s significant drying of the atmosphere in addition to cooling (beyond what would be expected from simple temperature decrease).
The time alloted to the last warm PDO seems a bit short. 20 years. I have discussed this with Joe Aleo before, and it is possible that it might be more like a few years ago, rather than 1999. If the PDO has just recently flipped, it will be a few more years until the Arctic regrows.
I do, however, agree that the Solar cycle downturns follow the climactic downturns much too close for cavalier dismissal. We shall see what we see.
The New York Times has an intersting piece on their June 16, 2011
Opinion page that goes into some detail as to what a “quite sun” means
to life pn earth as we currently know it.
They cite the dangers and benefits for radio communication, GPS equipment,
astronauts and satellites. They fo into cosmic rays in this reguard.
However there’s NO mention of ant possible effects of a what a quite sun
might mean for upper atmospheric, ground level, or ocean temperatures.
See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/opinion/17baker.html? r=1
0.8 degrees of warming is not a huge scary increase in temperatures it is a very small increase in global average temperatures over a century,we have seen global temperatures rise and fall by this amount per century many times during the last 10000 years.This Solar minimum if it happens could for all I know drop global temperatures by 0.8 degrees this century.I refuse to make the assumptions that warmist insist that I make when looking at future temperature change that global temperatures remained stable for a thousand years and then erm shot up by a huge 0.8 degrees in the 20th century.We will have to wait until 2100 to see if global temperatures go up or down in this century,I will not be here to see that .So far as I can see Don Easterbrook makes some good points about the little ice age and if your estimates of global temperature variation don’t match these events then it just shows how worthless your global temperatures are.
Smokey, Glad you posted this again:
http://oi52.tinypic.com/2agnous.jpg
…as I am still waiting for you to tell us all why a chart of 7 cities and Central England (picked how?) is better than this Northern Hemispheric chart for roughly the same period:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ei/ei_image/highlat.gif
Look at the whole of the NH and the trend is pretty darn clear.