Guest Post by Ric Werme
Nils-Axel Mörner, best known for his career of studying sea level and sea level records, reported in the April 2011 issue of the journal Energy & Environment that:
At around 2040-2050 we will be in a new major Solar Minimum. It is to be expected that we will then have a new “Little Ice Age” over the Arctic and NW Europe. The past Solar Minima were linked to a general speeding-up of the Earth’s rate of rotation. This affected the surface currents and southward penetration of Arctic water in the North Atlantic causing “Little Ice Ages” over northwestern Europe and the Arctic.
At the time I thought this was a bit of a reach, and still do, but it fits in well with:
- today’s earlier post, Study: solar activity lull increases chances of cold UK winters
- discussions at ICCC #6 about more coming cold winters and realizing that some people were quite familiar with the paper, e.g. Nicola Scafetta but some were not (I gave Bill Gray my copy) and
- a “flurry” of reports from the southern hemisphere and July skiing in the northern hemisphere.
Mörner claims
During the Spörer, Maunder and Dalton Solar Minima, Arctic water was forced southwards all the way down to Mid-Portugal and the adjacent land areas experienced “Little Ice Ages” (Mörner, 1995, 2010). At the same time, however, the Gibraltar and NW Africa experienced warm events. This North-South opposed climate conditions are well understood in terms of differential distribution of current flow-masses along the northern and southern branches, respectively, of the Gulf Stream (Mörner, 1995, 2010).
While he mentions Svensmark’s “brilliant new theory,” Mörner refers to changes in the Earth’s rotation rate due to changes in the solar wind. I have a lot of trouble with that. I’m more comfortable with changing rates due to build up of seasonal snow and ice at high latitudes. Nevertheless, Mörner explains:
Due to the changes in rotation, the oceanic surface current system is forced to respond (Figure 1). As a function of this, the Gulf Stream alters its main distribution of water along the northern and southern branches, and simultaneously cold Arctic water can, at the speeding-up phases of Solar Minima, penetrate far down along the west coasts of Europe creating Little Ice Age environmental conditions (Figure 2).
Note this is a regional change, any global effects will like be much milder.
As for the timing of all this:
The date of the New Solar Minimum has been assigned at around 2040 by Mörner et al. (2003), at 2030-2040 by Harrara (2010), at 2042 ±11 by Abdassamatov (2010) and at 2030-2040 by Scafetta (2010), implying a fairly congruent picture despite somewhat different ways of transferring past signals into future predictions.
The onset of the associated cooling has been given at 2010 by Easterbrook (2010) and Herrara (2010), and at “approximately 2014” by Abdassamatov (2010). Easterbrook (2010) backs up his claim that the cooling has already commenced by geological observations facts.
At any rate, from a Solar-Terrestrial point of view, we will, by the middle of this century, be in a New Solar Minimum and in a New Little Ice Age. This conclusion is completely opposite to the scenarios presented by IPCC (2001, 2007) as illustrated in Figure 3. With “the Sun in the centre”, no other conclusion can be drawn, however.
While the official home for the article is at Energy & Environment, a non pay-walled version is at eike-klima-energie.eu
H/t to David L. Hagen
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—With “the Sun in the centre”, —
Nice echo of ‘eppur si muove’ there.
Does this mean we will be able to add polar bear meat to our future barbeque summers?
There is an article currently making the rounds that “asian pollution” is to blame for “slowing global warming.” So, would cleaning up that pollution be a good thing, or a bad thing?
“…First claims by the (C)AGW-pushers that Energy & Environment is not a real peer-reviewed science journal thus this can be completely ignored as unscientific nonsense, shall be arriving in 4… 3… 2…”
Added to that will be the “Well, they also predicted Global Cooling back in the 70’s, and that never happened, either.”
Still, there does seem to be an increasing call in the science community about the POSSIBILITY of Catastrophic Global Cooling. They’re just not sure who to blame, yet…
Aha, the Icy End of Times called for by 2008 or so has been postponed. Now the Icy End of Times is projected for the middle of this century and this time it’s for certain!
Anthony, it is wee bit to far into the future. So everyone will have forgotten this little fantasy by, well, the weekend. Try projecting the Icy End of Times for say 2014, that would work for three years, no?
RichyRoo2011-
According to my history of science text, the first known, recorded theory of Heliocentrism was by Aristarchos of Samos in the third century BC. He put the visible planets in their correct order of distance from the sun. He also estimated the sidereal Earth year at 365+1/152 Days in the notation of the time and which is accurate to less than 10 seconds. Smart bloke.
Would be quite handy for the world if we could get him back and start working on the question of climate forcings and feedbacks.
It was not until 1800 years later that science overcame the Ptolmic dogma of geocenticism and that was made possible by the invention of the telescope and the scientific discipline of observational astronomy, et al
Let us hope it doesn’t take civilisation 1800 years to sort out climate science.
Yet another forecast based on the Gleisberg and De Vries cycles. But without knowing the driver of these cycles it is impossible to use them for forecasting because they do not always follow the same pattern. If they did have this knowledge they would realize we are already in a solar grand minimum that will end in 30 years.
Be careful in getting carried away with speculative claims of future climate trends.
I recall similar back in the mid to late 1970’s.
Policyguy
“So the point becomes which direction of adaptation do we follow?”
I work at a power station in the UK that has vital systems freeze during the last winter, and we were unable to run. This spring and summer, we have been placing permanent shielding around vital plant to protect it from freezing winds, and hold in some of the heat generated by pump motors etc.
We have yet to spend a penny preparing for global warming. It is funny how companies that that rely on actual climatic evidence to prepare for the future are investing in fighting against colder times. I wonder what preparations are being put in place at airports such as Heathrow?
Minor update dept. Things look more clear at 0800 EDT than they did around 0015. One bullet point above got turned around by deleting other text and not fixing what was left. Fixed now with
discussions at ICCC #6 about more coming cold winters and realizing that some people were quite familiar with the paper, e.g. Nicola Scafetta but some were not (I gave Bill Gray my copy)
Originally I said Scafetta was not familiar with the paper, in fact, he knew all about it and the paper I link to is one of the references for this paper.
Another reference is to Don Easterbrook’s presentation at ICCC #4 in Chicago last May, links to that include and a recent comment here are:
http://www.iceagenow.com/Looming_Threat_of_Global_Cooling.htm
http://www.heartland.org/events/2010Chicago/PowerPoints/Monday%20-%20Session%201/Track%202%20-%20Science%202/Don_Easterbrook.ppt
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/14/all-three-of-these-lines-of-research-to-point-to-the-familiar-sunspot-cycle-shutting-down-for-a-while/#comment-681157
Some Solar scientists are now projecting a quiet sun for several decades and possibly for the next several sun cycles after the current sun cycle #24 peaks in 2013. Consequently there are a growing number of climate researchers and scientists who like their predecessors did in the 1970’s, are again projecting another Ice Age like the Maunder Minimum. I am not one of those. I do see a cooler climate period coming up for the next 20-30 years caused by SST cooling but not a significant ice age like the period from 1650-1725 when sun spots virtually disappeared. If the lack of sun spots and lower solar output was the cause of our global cooling during the ice age then it must follow that this happens at other times when the sun is also low in sunspot activity like at all minimums and our climate should warm up when the sunspot activity is high[ at maximums ]. This did not happen. Solar cycle # 19 had the highest number of sunspots [190 yearly mean and monthly mean of 253 in October 1957] during late 1950’s and early 1960’s.This should have translated to the biggest temperature spike during the last 100 years if the theory is valid. Yet there was only a minor global temperature spike from an anomaly of -0.252 in 1955 to-0.075 during the solar max in 1957.
An analysis of the past 13 solar cycles going back some 144 years showed that global temperatures [hadcrut3gl] dropped during only 6 of the 13 minimums and rose only during 6 solar maximums. So the hypothesis that reduced solar sun spot numbers is an indicator of lower solar output which then results in lower global temperatures is still questionable. During the latter stages of cycle # 23 we had very low number of sun spots yet the global temperature anomalies although flat in terms of increase from 1998-2008, they were at record highs levels.
It seems to me that our climate does not correlate with sun spot activity at all but follows more the cycles of Enso, SST [as indicated by AMO and PDO, NAO and AO.]
I find it hard to believe that shortening the day by a second or two would have any changes on climate. Much less the major changes predicted here.
I also find it hard to believe that the solar wind could have any impact on the earth’s rate of rotation. The speed up in rotation during cold spells is caused by water, in the form of ice, accumulating at the poles.
Warming, cooling – who cares? The Church of Climate Change with its Vatican at the UN, is now positioned to enforce unelected world government no matter what happens with the climate. If it’s cooling, the warmer bits will have to be taxed and rationed to pay for mitigation in the cooler bits. And to think, I spent the first 50 years of my life thinking that environmentalism was about protecting the environment. Silly me.
Patrick Davis says:
July 5, 2011 at 10:10 pm
“That’s why many westernised countries are rushing to install some form of cap and trade, carbon tax or ETS.”
No. They’re rushing to increase taxes because they’re broke…
The driest desert on the planet UNDER SNOW (btw:don´t forget snow=water). Weren´t we in a GLOBAL WARMING ERA according to the IPCC?:
http://www.casttv.com/video/3c215bp/north-chile-shivers-under-snow-video
A few months ago, during SH summer, the famous AG visited south america to “lecture” on GW and the disappearence of glaciers on the Andes and its most terrible consequences: The lack of drinking water and the danger of drought in the amazon basin.
Snow on the driest desert in the world (The Atacama desert), 18°S to 28°S latitude , photos at:
http://www.latercera.com/noticia/nacional/2011/07/680-377494-9-onemi-amplia-alerta-temprana-para-toda-antofagasta-por-nevadas-y-fuertes-vientos.shtml
Here again, one must always look for the first encountered change agent to explain a change in state. During long minimums, several natural weather pattern oscillations can occur. Not through cause and effect mind you, but just because the former has a rather metronome cadence and the latter a rather more unpredictable chaotic cadence.
I always recommend looking at these natural weather pattern oscillations and their underlying oceanic and atmospheric oscillations as the primary natural intrinsic agent of change before I would link external or anthropogenic causes.
Once again, the null hypothesis says that an external or anthropogenic cause must have a greater, stronger mechanism than an intrinsic natural agent of change in order to reject the null hypothesis. If the two are equal, the null hypothesis stands.
Tony;
Have you considered the effects of the recent strong earthquakes in Japan, Chile, even reaching as far back as the Sumatra-Andamen to be the cause of the Earth’s accelerated rotation?
All three of these quakes led to an actual shortening of days. Something on the order of a few milliseconds, but it was caused as the average distance from center of mass decreased due to the tremors themselves.
Just something to consider when you’re trying to figure out why the Earth is turning faster recently.
. I believe that the cooling during the Mini Ice Age was not entirely due to solar sunspot changes alone, but was possibly caused by other cosmic events not yet fully researched and understood [like perhaps our solar system passed through some different interstellar medium containing unique or varying cosmic dust or particles. Could this section of interstellar gas of higher concentration of cosmic dust or debris have the same effect as sulphur dioxide particles from volcanic dust in our atmosphere today?
Our sun and our solar system are currently moving through a cloud of interstellar gas. We are currently immersed in a” local fluff” cloud which is of a very low density. While not fully investigated yet , is it possible that our local “fluff” cloud could periodically pass through more denser sub parts containing grains of dust and special particles from past interstellar shock fronts[major cosmic explosions and out bursts] or unique dust and debris from tails of major comets . These could alter also the flux of solar photons reaching our mesosphere and, cause a variation in the flux of charged particles reaching our atmosphere and thus change the global electrical system which could alter our weather periodically, like the little ice age
The solar wind shields the Earth from most interactions with low density interstellar gases and clouds but what happens when there are periods of very solar wind and low flux? I realize that I am only speculating here but so is the argument that low solar sunspots definitely cause Little Ice Ages.
matt v. says:
July 6, 2011 at 5:43 am
Of course the sunspot number vs temp correlation is a bit dubious – but we cannot know the time lag between significant solar forcing changes and the observable climate changes. It may be expected that some high forcing variables could cause a change in a few years or that minor forcing changes take a few decades to be ‘observable’. But in any event, the time lag must be there and must be significant – you don’t heat a few billion kilometres of water up by tenth of a degree overnight! Even those with outdoor swimming pools in warm countries know that it takes weeks to warm up from the change from spring to summer months. The converse is true as the summer fades into autumn, your pool feels ‘warm’. The earth is no different to a swimming pool – just that it’s bloody big and takes a long time to warm up and cool down – so in effect, the sea probably acts as a ‘smoothing’ filter for any significant solar changes – and the signal of these would probably be lost altogether if they are short lived or small variation events. The point being that such small changes would still have an actual effect, but it would be difficult to observe contemporaneously. So, in the context of the fairly warm/high sunspot activity solar cycles of late -the cumulative effect on the oceans would be a very slight temp rise.
Lets see them blame that on man and the gasoline engine.
Mörner refers to changes in the Earth’s rotation rate due to changes in the solar wind
It is highly unlikely that there is such a connection. This reminds me about the debate a century ago about the origin of the craters on the Moon. Volcanologists who knew about volcanoes could clearly see that the craters were not volcanic so were favoring the impact theory [of which they knew little]. Astronomers who knew little about volcanoes would favor the impact theory. I.e. people often ascribe effects to causes about which they knew but little.
Well, if a little ice age really does occur, then I say we blame Al Gore and his ilk for it. See, if he hadn’t harangued us into cutting carbon emissions, we might have been able to keep things a little warmer. But thanks to the AGW crowd, we’re all going to freeze. And I friggin hate winter so this is a nightmare scenario for me. I was actually looking forward to some global warming. =-(
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 6, 2011 at 7:02 am
Astronomers who knew little about volcanoes would favor the impact theory.
correction: ‘would favor volcanoes’, of course.
RE: Marc Wilson:
Absolutely correct: Climate affects LOD but LOD has NO effect on climate. Claims that it does are sheer nonsense, and a disgrace to WUWT. –AGF