Just published in GRL, a new paper by Lockwood et al that suggests the sun may be headed for a Maunder type minimum.:
The persistence of solar activity indicators and the descent of the Sun into Maunder Minimum conditions
Key Points
- Can we predict the onset of the next grand solar minimum
- Grand minima can be predicted using some solar indices
- The design and operation of systems influenced by space climate can be optimised
Abstract:
The recent low and prolonged minimum of the solar cycle, along with the slow growth in activity of the new cycle, has led to suggestions that the Sun is entering a Grand Solar Minimum (GSMi), potentially as deep as the Maunder Minimum (MM). This raises questions about the persistence and predictability of solar activity. We study the autocorrelation functions and predictability R2L(t) of solar indices, particularly group sunspot number RG and heliospheric modulation potential Φ for which we have data during the descent into the MM. For RG and Φ, R2L(t) > 0.5 for times into the future of t ≈ 4 and ≈ 3 solar cycles, respectively: sufficient to allow prediction of a GSMi onset. The lower predictability of sunspot number RZ is discussed. The current declines in peak and mean RG are the largest since the onset of the MM and exceed those around 1800 which failed to initiate a GSMi.
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Good job I am planning to move to the tropics next year. This summer in Sydney is a complete washout. 7 or 8 degrees C below the historical average max this coming week, and that is the trend, despite a few warmish days. I’m off to Mackay for Christmas and inland for new year, just to try to keep warm this summer.
Can we predict the onset of the next grand solar minimum
====================
……….. no
To extend any graph that varies as the one above is problematic. There is no guarantee that the next leg of the graph won’t jump upwards. But there have been other indicators that might indicate that the future guess from the graph could be right. A Maunder Minimum would certainly kill AGW dead in its tracks.
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Hey Rossi, get that e-cat going. We need it for the next 500 years of cooling.
Is this the same Lockwood that was mostly wrong on his other predictions? I have no faith any more in the model predictions by these guys.
“The current declines in peak and mean RG are the largest since the onset of the MM and exceed those around 1800 which failed to initiate a GSMi.”
So the Dalton Minimum wasn’t very grand.
I expect Leif to be here in 3, 2,…
Latitude says:
December 2, 2011 at 6:08 am (Edit)
Can we predict the onset of the next grand solar minimum
====================
……….. no
Speak for yourself..
WOW…. The Sun may be a variable Star!?!? But we need to carefully define the word “Variable”. It appears that visible light is relatively constant [the basis for the TSI measurement]; the UV and other frequencies of energy are wildly [10 times UV swing] variable.
As per my previous posts, don’t look at the Sunspot number for what effects the Earth’s Weather. Instead, look at the 10.7 cm Flux. This measures the UV energy which directly effects the heat in the Ozone Layer. This is the thermal blanket that helps us become warm or cold.
The “UV effects” are the cause of the disparity between the “TSI” measurement and the effects of the the “TSI” on our Climate.
We will just need to wait for the rest of the Solar and Climate Community to catch-up.
Link to the paper?
Santa Anna says it’s cooling too…
Since reports in 2008/9 indicated AG-warming would reduce Santa Anna winds….
here…
http://www.achangeinthewind.com/2008/10/good-news-friday-global-warming-lessening-santa-ana-wind-conditions.html
and here too….
http://www.energy.ca.gov/2009publications/…/CEC-500-2009-015-D.PDF
Therefore the current powerful Santa Anna winds must be a confirmation of Global Cooling !!
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-02/southern-california-cleanup-slowed-as-winds-howl-a-second-night.html
That’s cool.
There is clearly a strong subconscious urge on the part of many scientists today to put forth “dire” predictions, and for the media and/or the public to want to hear such–it’s the science version of “reality TV”, where the cast is over the top rather than just ordinary folks (and the favorite performers especially so–we might call this episode, “Snooky Finds the Sun in Bed, After a Late Night–And Goes Nuts”). Apparently, dire predictions are to these scientists and their readers what teasingly-unclad ladies are to mass market advertising–irresistible. Apparently the current generation is bored with a tired old Earth, and a Sun under which nothing is new. Can’t anyone else see we are dealing in such cases as this with bored children, rather than master scientists? When they grow up and get back to respecting the Standard Atmosphere (which my Venus/Earth comparison confirmed as the fundamental and stable atmospheric reality) rather than visions of runaway or meter-pegging climate, I will begin to take climate scientists seriously.
Link to the paper:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011GL049811.shtml
thank you mr./ms. jmrsudbury
If Leif is coming in, are we still on the trend line for contrast and magnetic strength of sunspots from Livingston and Penn?
It didn’t take long to hear the drum of “it’s the Sun”. Reminds me of Trenbreth’s hurricane nonsense before the research was in and convincingly showed that he was wrong. Solar influence on terra firma temperature anomalies must rise above the background natural weather pattern variation short and long term oscillations. In other words, the affects of UV on the ozone layer must somehow perculate down to the weather level and force change in oceanic teleconnections on atmospheric natural weather pattern variations in measurable ways. Sorry. Not enough energy. Clearing out one pressure system for another and sustaining it takes, for lack of a better word, Hercules’ strength.
I would rather we get back to the Sun and whether or not this paper demonstrates new understandings of Solar prediction efforts.
I was wondering why 1939 kept coming up in my local weather broadcasts as having the hottest day on record for that day, now I know why. (UHI not a big factor at the Vancouver airport this time of year here).
Pamela Gray says:
December 2, 2011 at 7:14 am
Solar influence on terra firma temperature anomalies must rise above the background natural weather pattern variation short and long term oscillations. In other words, the affects of UV on the ozone layer must somehow perculate down to the weather level and force change in oceanic teleconnections on atmospheric natural weather pattern variations in measurable ways. Sorry. Not enough energy. Clearing out one pressure system for another and sustaining it takes, for lack of a better word, Hercules’ strength.
You’re a nice person, but you haven’t a clue about the way in which solar variability affects climate, which it does, at all timecscales.
jack morrow says:
December 2, 2011 at 6:18 am
Is this the same Lockwood that was mostly wrong on his other predictions? I have no faith any more in the model predictions by these guys.
I suspect this is he, Prof Mike Lockwood, who when interviewed a little while ago – 09/10 I think, said on record rather dismissively, that if the quiet Sun was going to have an effet on temperatures we would have seen by it now! Or words to that effect. The guy has even been on The Sky at Night with Sir Patrick Moore, he’s lost all credibility in my view, he’s sold out too many times to the AGW brigade!
re: Tallbloke…
A little less condescension, please? How does your snarky comment re Pamela help this conversation?
Tallbloke, you are absolutely correct. I haven’t a clue. Especially the variability part getting through our thick soup to such a degree that it smacks me in the face with something like, “Man oh man the Sun is quiet today. Must wear my fur coat instead of the stadium jacket.”
I suppose you are ready to tell me to never mind the descrepancy between our cold Pacific Ocean anomaly not matching the teeny tiny change in IR between a busy and a quiet Sun, or the power of eastern trade winds to blow warm water away not matching the teeny tiny power of UV variation on those trades.
Yep. I be clueless.
Well, it just so happens:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v4/n11/full/ngeo1282.html
There is a discussion of the solar UV paper here: http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/winter-sun
Pamela Gray says:
December 2, 2011 at 7:14 am
“Not enough energy. Clearing out one pressure system for another and sustaining it takes, for lack of a better word, Hercules’ strength.”
Pamela, if changes in the Solar spectrum (variation in UV output) and/or changes in the Solar magnetic field have an effect on cloudiness, modulating it by a percent or two, you suddenly get the necessary change in energy.
Dr. Lurtz says:
December 2, 2011 at 6:28 am
Instead, look at the 10.7 cm Flux. This measures the UV energy which directly effects the heat in the Ozone Layer.
Isn’t 10cm UHF? Isn’t UV 100nm? A million times more energy per photon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Light_spectrum.svg
We all know that hairspray is what drives the Ozone layer. Climate $cientists have told us this for years and they would know. That is why they created the Montreal Protocol, so that Dupont could continue to get royalties on a new refrigerant, once their patent on Freon expired. The Montreal Protocol made it illegal to make use of Dupont’s Freon patent once it expired. Instead you had to pay royalties on Dupont’s new patent.
$cience in action.