From the Institute of Physics
More than 1 in 10 chance of colder UK winters
As the Sun enters a period of low solar activity over the next 50 years, new research has calculated the probability of unusually cold winter temperatures occurring in the UK.
Last year, the same group of researchers, from the University of Reading, linked colder winters in Europe to low solar activity and predicted that the Sun is moving into a particularly low period of activity, meaning the UK will experience more cold winters in the future – potentially similar to those experienced in the Maunder minimum at the end of the 17th century.
The new research, published today, Tuesday 5 July 2011, in IOP Publishing’s journal Environmental Research Letters, supports recent suggestions that sunspot activity is waning, and goes further, using the behaviour of the Sun over the last 9300 years to predict the probabilities of future solar changes.
Over the next 50 years, the researchers show that the probability of the Sun returning to Maunder minimum conditions is about 10 per cent, raising the chances that the average winter temperature will fall below 2.5 oC to around 1 in 7, assuming all other factors, including man-made effects and El Niño, remain constant.
Put in context, the average UK winter temperature for the last 20 years has been 5.04 oC, however the last three winters have averaged 3.50 °C, 2.53 °C and 3.13 °C, with 2009/10 being the 14th coldest in the last 160 years.
The increased probability of colder winters could hold great value for national infrastructure planning by government organisations who have struggled to adapt to the extreme weather conditions experienced in the UK over the past two years.
It is stressed, however, that these results do not have any implications for global climate change, which is concerned with average temperatures for all parts of the world and all times of year. The reported changes only apply in winter and are regional – for example, when the winter is colder in Europe it tends to be warmer in Greenland so that there is almost no effect on the global mean.
These studies obtained the average temperatures between December and February for the past 352 years from the Central England Temperature (CET) data series – the world’s longest instrumental temperature record, maintained by the UK Met Office, extending back to 1659.
This data set was combined with records of the Sun’s activity obtained through the analysis of ‘cosmogenic isotopes’, which are specific types of carbon and beryllium that are known to be influenced by the Sun.
The magnetic field of the Sun protects the Earth from galactic cosmic rays, which, as they hit the Earth’s atmosphere, generate the cosmogenic isotopes which are then deposited in tree trunks and ice sheets. These cosmogenic isotopes can be collected and dated providing a unique insight into the Sun’s variability on timescales ranging from years to millennia.
Data from the cosmogenic isotopes suggests that we are currently coming to the end of a grand solar maximum – a period of intense activity in the Sun – and will therefore experience lower solar activity conditions in future,.
Many researchers have argued that temperature changes attributed to the Sun are, in reality, just caused by the internal variability of the climate system; however, the authors have used this 352-year temperature record to show that there is some, albeit small, predictive skill to be gained from solar activity despite it being just one of a number of factors that influence UK weather.
One mechanism that suggests a link between the Sun and recent cold winters is ‘blocking’. Low solar activity causes extensive anticyclones that persist for several weeks in the Atlantic Ocean, causing the warm westerly winds to be replaced by cold, continental north-easterly winds. Depending on the position of the anticyclone, this can also lead to clear skies at night causing the land to cool even further.
Lead author Professor Mike Lockwood said, “Our results show that over the next fifty years there is a 10 per cent chance that temperatures will return to Maunder minimum levels. Describing the Maunder minimum as a ‘little ice age’ is somewhat misleading however.
“Cold winters were indeed more common during the Maunder minimum but there were also some very warm ones between them, summers were not colder, and the drop in average temperatures was not nearly as great, nor as global, as during a real ice age.”
From Tuesday 5 July (when the link goes active) this journal paper can be found at http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/3/034004
h/t to reader “a jones”
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Just as Gillard is proposing a carbon tax in Australia the Gore effect is striking, severe cold weather predicted for next 5 days in Easter Australia, check it out! Possbly the strongest cold front Ive ever seen. http://www.bom.gov.au/australia/charts/4day_col.shtml
Best thing about this study is that it uses the CET record. Both sides have been focusing almost entirely on the various “adjusted” and “homogenized” records supposedly creating a global average. You can’t do science or even ordinary life properly unless you start with REAL and CONSISTENT measurements, adjusted only by the immediate process of calibrating the REAL instrument.
The sun never sets on the British Empire…. right? 🙂
“The usual caveat, So solar influences are only pertinant to the UK. I dont think so!”
I smell desperation in the AGW church.
Last night on Radio Four Quentin Cooper questioned the efficacy of climate models but still managed to come up with a formula that suggested greater purturbation in a negative sense. It wouold appear that the models underestimated the likelyhood of some catastrophic climate change. Perhaps it was too much to hope that some hopefulness would emanate from such a finding. Perhaps this prmpted by Bristol University looking for some notoriety rather than some propensity of our planet. It may just be that we have hoovered the atmosphere of it pollutants so maticulously that we have run out of dust to deflect that which warms us. The experience of China is that its pollutants are coercing a cooler environment. This factor, it is said, will return to the general pattern that the warmists predict if the polluting sources are ever removed! Carry on polluting, is that the answer? We have known for some time how climate models have beem engineered to reflect the will of their controllers. I recall Gordon Browns Treasury Model, the wheels fell off!
I think the story could benefit from a little more context.
For the last few years, we’ve been told here in the UK that the winter weather is exceptionally cold, and that this is not likely to continue. For those of us with longer memories there has been nothing remarkable about the last three winters, it was the mild ones preceding that were unusual.
Look at the figures. The last twenty years, we’re told, the average winter temperature was 5.04C. That must mean that, excluding the three recent cold winters, there were seventeen years, 1991-2007, with an average of around 5.39C.
Now look at this link, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/6672631/British-winter-to-be-milder-says-Met.html, where the Met Office, bless ’em, were predicting a mild winter for 2009/10. They say that the average winter temperature in the UK since 1971 was 3.7C – and that includes all of the warm winters of the nineties and the noughties. What was it like in the seventies and eighties ? Go figure.
Each year the press compare our ‘exceptionally cold weather’ with the average of the last twenty years. The truth is that those years 1991-2007 were the exception. The recent years have been normal UK winter weather, taking the longer view.
Given all this, putting the odds of average winter temperatures here falling to 2.5C in the coming solar hiatus at one in seven seems a tad optimistic. It seems these guys are relying on the CO2 to keep us warm. I think I’d rather trust in a good overcoat.
How does Barbara Boxer feel about the current ski season? Last I heard the slopes were still open in some parts of California, and if they weren’t, it wasn’t for lack of snow. Maybe all the ski instructors had to leave to go teach surfing somewhere.
One of the best indicators that snow and cold is on the way for the UK is a Greenland/Scandinavian blocking high. High pressure in winter has EXACTLY the same effect when it’s over Greenland as it would if it were over the UK — i.e. cold clear nights — high pressure systems bring a clockwise airflow in the northern hemisphere straight from the North Pole. So why Lockwood imagines Greenland would be warmer is hard to understand.
Weren’t we told that the chance of a severe winter in the UK was 1 in 20 (or something like that; the memory ain’t what it used to be). We’ve had three severe winters in a row, ie a 1 in 8000 event. So the probability of getting more severe winters is so low as to be complete fantasy. Or am I mssing something???? Can anybody remember the details?
4 July: BBC: Paul Hudson blog: Unsettled June weather to extend into July
It’s still early days, but with the half way stage of summer approaching, so far only Piers Corbyn at Weather Action can claim any success with this summer’s forecast.
He argued consistently that Summer 2011 would be unsettled because of, in part, continued weak solar activity, which would at times push the Jet stream further south than normal.
Longer term, heading towards mid-July, there are signs that although westerly winds will dominate, pressure may build in southern areas, leading to traditional set up across the UK…
This is exactly the type of weather pattern that is most common across the British Isles at this time of year.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2011/07/unsettled-june-weather-to-exte.shtml
some might like to check the comments as well.
The British Empire upon which the sun never used to set still has its centre-of-the-world mind I guess. The mighty sun has a serious affect on UK winters only. And by the way, while they were having barbeque winters in Greenland, we were freezing our asses off to the west i n Canada and US during those years, and in the SH, crocodiles, fish, domestic stock and children were freezing in S. America.
http://bing.search.sympatico.ca/?q=Coldest%20winter%20in%20South%20America&mkt=en-ca&setLang=en-CA
“At least 175 people have died in the coldest winter in South America in recent years, officials in six affected countries said, dpa reported.The cold was worst in southern Peru ..,,Argentina – Sixteen people froze to death ..,.In Bolivia, 18 people died, in Paraguay five and two each in Chile and Uruguay. Nine people died of the cold in southern Brazil. Thousands of cattle also froze to death on their pastures in Paraguay and Brazil. …,”
God help us,if the winters in the UK are to get colder,then there will be a large loss of life amongst the older population.Energy bills have just gone up ..again. With no long term planning for energy beyond wind power, this country is in decline on the industrial,social and economically front.Mass civil disobedience seems the only way ,as politicians will not listen any more
With jobs going to economic migrants, industry going abroad because of spiralling energy costs the failing social frabric of this once great country has already started.What sort of country will be left for the next generation coming up?
I have already told my children to get out as quickly as posssible, to find a new country to live in where a consensus will NOT erode a country and the ability to live a decent life.
“…It is stressed, however, that these results do not have any implications for global climate change, which is concerned with average temperatures for all parts of the world and all times of year. The reported changes only apply in winter and are regional – for example, when the winter is colder in Europe it tends to be warmer in Greenland so that there is almost no effect on the global mean…”
So let’s see – when its summer in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s winter in the Southern Hemisphere (and vice-versa). Yep, sounds global to me.
They’re trying hard to keep the “global” variations out of the story, and simply call the projected cold a “weather variability” event.
gyptis444 says:
July 5, 2011 at 1:33 am
How does (lower) solar activity selectively lower temperatures at one geographic location while simultaneously increasing temperatures at another location in the same hemisphere? Is that really what happened at the time of the Maunder Minimum?
The theory is (and, to be fair.has been for some time) that changes in solar activity result in shifts in weather patterns. Lockwood’s only repeating what other scientists hypothesised several years earlier.
Is this what happened during the maunder minimum?
It’s almost certainly a contributry factor to the NW Europe climate during the maunder period. . Remember that summer temperatures didn’t vary that much from normal throughout the Maunder and Dalton periods. Why not? If the sun (TSI) had a direct influence then we’d expect to see summer temperatures drop at least as much as those in winter.
Basically, there doesn’t appear to have been a significant drop in incoming solar energy during the Maunder – nor is there likely to be in the next 20-30 years (there hasn’t been in the last 5 years of low activity) so , while some regions can expect some seasonal climate shifts, the global temperatures as measured by the surface and satellite (UAH/RSS) records are unlikely to fall very far – and may even continue to rise.
To have the effect observed those variations in solar activity levels have to shift the surface air pressure distribution so as to favour a change in prevailing wind direction over Western Europe.
Given the chaotic variability of short term weather I cannot see how the system could isoilate such an effect in a single region over any length of time. There have to be global implications.
Furthermore changing the surface air pressure distribution requires a change in the vertical temperature profile of the atmosphere and I cannot see how the sun could localise it’s effect to a single hemisphere let alone a single region within one hemisphere.
Thus once one accepts such a link to solar activity in any region in either hemisphere one must proceed to apply logic and follow where it leads.
Which is here:
http://www.irishweatheronline.com/features-2/wilde-weather/the-sun-could-control-earths-temperature/290.html
Murray Grainger says:
July 5, 2011 at 12:19 am
Cold winters coupled with “London could be flooded within 100 years as melting Arctic ice causes sea levels to rise by up to 900cm (3ft), a new study shows.” means it is time to buy shares in ice-skate suppliers.
———————————————–
Three feet = 90 centimeters, not 900 centimeters.
Richard Briscoe
For what it’s worth the CET winter average for 1971-2011 (D/J/F) was 4.52. High 6.50 in 1989: Low 1.57 in 1979. The 1991-2011 average was 4.65. The warmest winter in the whole 350 year record was 1869 when the figure was 6.77.
This is not the whole of the UK of course.
The winter just past goes down as “unexceptionable” mainly on the strength of a mild February. December was the coldest since 1981, a month I remember well since I had to drive 100 miles on New Year’s Eve to sort a burst pipe in an empty house!
Susie says:
July 5, 2011 at 6:11 am
“One of the best indicators that snow and cold is on the way for the UK is a Greenland/Scandinavian blocking high. High pressure in winter has EXACTLY the same effect when it’s over Greenland as it would if it were over the UK — i.e. cold clear nights — high pressure systems bring a clockwise airflow in the northern hemisphere straight from the North Pole. So why Lockwood imagines Greenland would be warmer is hard to understand.”
___________________________________________________________________________
Actually, there is an element of truth to this North Atlantic “see-saw” effect. Cold winter weather in NW Europe (not just the UK) associated with being on the eastern side of a blocking anti-cyclone (north winds) means that, depending its exact size and position, Iceland, Greenland and even Eastern Canada can find themselves to the west of a blocking anti-cyclone and under the influence of warmer southerly winds.
This synoptic chart from February 1947 illustrates the effect rather nicely – note the extremely mild temperatures over Eastern Canada :
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gesc_b/Pages/NorthAtlanticPages/NH8feb.htm
Watch the pea Susie “Professor” Lockwood throws in the word WARMER (to throw a bone to the warmisters) but the Greenland Highlands often don’t get much warmer than -30 degrees in the winter (and almost hit -60 degrees celsius this winter close to the old record set in the 50s I think) so WARMER is irrelevant to the phase change of water (I think that is what he is hinting at, Greenland is meeeellllllting don’t forget). Greenland is the AGW canary in the coal mine (oops don’t mention carbon that horrible stuff that keeps you warm in so many convenient ways) and must be seen to be in danger even if you are freezing your cahones off over in the UK. As is typical for a La Nina, the average temperature over Labrador and the area South of Greenland was warmer this winter as the rest of North America froze. If “Prof Lockwood is talking of this type of WARMER then he is still being disingenuous linking in his own words 2 separate processes (neither of which he can fully quantify the mechanisms for). Sounds like climate research to me.
Covering themselves as the wind turns…
MWP & LIA has been identified in South America, Africa, & I also believe New Zealand! Check out An Englishman’s Castle blog for references, I can’t seem to get hold of them at the moment.
In the meantime, from the Wet Office we get great AGW predictions of “some areas will experience warmer weather, others will experience colder weather. Some areas will experience more drought, other areas will experience less drought”. I could go on but I get depresses too easily on their webpages!
English winters (CET) are, as the most local climatologists know, controlled by the North Atlantic Oscillation – NAO (pressure differential between the Azores and Iceland) as it is graphically demonstrated here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/WPd.htm
Does the solar output control the NAO?
To my knowledge not shown previously by any kind of data, the polar circle insolation in the winter is very low, but pressure is almost a negative mirror image of the one in the Azores some 30 degrees further south.
So what does control the NAO?
I would suggest another local non-solar function as I’ve shown here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NAO-.htm
My study also shows that CET winters may get colder in coming decades, but not because of the sunspots, but of the NAO getting dipper into negative territory. This also applies to the USA Atlantic coast, but not to Greenland and the north East Canada, it is just a function of the negative NAO.
What about the English summers?
Ah, that is another story, suffice to say the CET summers have been rather flat (or to be more precise had a slight cooling trend) for the last 3 centuries, despite the solar activity roaring away at the same time .
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETsw.htm
Sunspot activity was on the low side 1910-20, but those were some of the warmest CET winters. Alternatively around 1950 solar activity was the strongest ever, but winters were much cooler. A bit of a paradox here.
I suggest to the Reading Uni scientists to have another look into what is already well known.
“With jobs going to economic migrants, industry going abroad because of spiralling energy costs the failing social frabric of this once great country has already started.What sort of country will be left for the next generation coming up? I have already told my children to get out as quickly as posssible, to find a new country to live in where a consensus will NOT erode a country and the ability to live a decent life.”
All that is necessary for evil to prosper is that good men do nothing.
@John Finn says:
July 5, 2011 at 7:35 am
“If the sun (TSI) had a direct influence then we’d expect to see summer temperatures drop at least as much as those in winter.”
Average monthly winter temperatures in the UK range around three times as much as in summer.
The inconvenient fact is that warming is good and the coming cold is very bad. Humanity has adapted progressively to the constant warming since the end of the LIA (1850), I don’t think adapting to cold compounded by CAGW stupidity will be as humane as it could be without the CAGW anti-science.