From Radio Voice of Russia:
Russia’s Pulkovo Observatory: “we could be in for a cooling period that lasts 200-250 years”
Scientists at Russia’s famous Pulkovo Observatory are convinced that the world is in for a period of global cooling.
Graph by David Archibald
Global warming which has been the subject of so many discussions in recent years, may give way to global cooling. According to scientists from the Pulkovo Observatory in St.Petersburg, solar activity is waning, so the average yearly temperature will begin to decline as well. Scientists from Britain and the US chime in saying that forecasts for global cooling are far from groundless. Some experts warn that a change in the climate may affect the ambitious projects for the exploration of the Arctic that have been launched by many countries.
Just recently, experts said that the Arctic ice cover was becoming thinner while journalists warned that the oncoming global warming would make it possible to grow oranges in the north of Siberia. Now, they say a cold spell will set in. Apparently, this will not occur overnight, Yuri Nagovitsyn of the Pulkovo Observatory, says.
“Journalists say the entire process is very simple: once solar activity declines, the temperature drops. But besides solar activity, the climate is influenced by other factors, including the lithosphere, the atmosphere, the ocean, the glaciers. The share of solar activity in climate change is only 20%. This means that sun’s activity could trigger certain changes whereas the actual climate changing process takes place on the Earth”.
Solar activity follows different cycles, including an 11-year cycle, a 90-year cycle and a 200-year cycle. Yuri Nagovitsyn comments.
“Evidently, solar activity is on the decrease. The 11-year cycle doesn’t bring about considerable climate change – only 1-2%. The impact of the 200-year cycle is greater – up to 50%. In this respect, we could be in for a cooling period that lasts 200-250 years. The period of low solar activity could start in 2030-2040 but it won’t be as pervasive as in the late 17th century”.
Even though pessimists say global cooling will hamper exploration of the Arctic, experts say it won’t. Climate change and the resulting increase in the thickness of the Arctic ice cover pose no obstacles to the extraction of oil and gas on the Arctic shelf. As oil and gas reserves of the Arctic sea shelf are estimated to be billions of tons, countries are demonstrating more interest in the development of the Arctic. Climate change will also have no impact on the Northern Sea Route, which makes it possible to cut trade routes between Europe, Asia and America. Professor Igor Davidenko comments.
“The Northern Sea Route has never opened so early or closed so late over the past 30 years. Last year saw a cargo transit record – more than five million tons. The first Chinese icebreaker sailed along the Northern Sea Route in 2012. China plans it to handle up to 15% of its exports”.
As Russia steps up efforts to upgrade its icebreaker fleet, new-generation icebreakers are set to arrive in the years to come. No climate changes will thus be able to impede an increase in shipping traffic via the Northern Sea Route.
Read more: http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_04_22/Cooling-in-the-Arctic-what-to-expect/
JDC says:
April 29, 2013 at 7:32 am
Leif will not approve.
Yeah, the Archibald’s graph used is quite old, not corrected for the Waldmeier discontinuity. The SC24 is way too high when compared to actual SSN data (it should be depicted on the level of something between SC5 and SC14).
But I think the Russians could be more or less right there will be a cooling if this low solar activity continues – because the sun – contrary to the Leif’s belief – was – as always – the chief driver of the recent warming since the solar cycle 20 (- one can quite clearly more or less see the solar cycle signal besides the ENSO events in the global temperature anomaly data) and the solar activity trend turning point (I mean since the SC20 where the last warming period – the CAGW scare is almost all about – began) was in march 2006 according to the SIDC-SSN data – one can easily check here. This quite coincides with the now visible turn in the global temperature anomaly trend -although many can object the recent warming stall period is too short and that it is too early call, if one looks at the graph the different behavior seems quite obvious and unprecedented in the last half of the century.
In my opinion no way there will be any significant warming next decade (..or more if the SC25 is even lower than current cycle) – whether Leif approves or not. And it will be killing for the CAGW business.
“Smithy says:
April 29, 2013 at 11:12 pm”
You need to study the coriolis effect a bit more closely, as Pamela quite rightly points out is a factor.
Lonnie E. Schubert says:
April 29, 2013 at 8:50 pm
“We may even be worried about uranium and thorium stores by the time we get fusion commercially viable. Of course, I may be pessimistic.”
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The Earth has 100,000’s of years of easily extractable thorium reserves. It only takes about 1.2g of Thorium to supply one person’s yearly energy supplies using Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs). Thorium is as plentiful as lead and it’s available in rich deposits all around the globe.
You’re right about Uranium. We’ll soon run out of the stuff as solid fuel reactors are extremely inefficient and only convert about 0.5% of U235 to energy before the fuel rod pellets require reprocessing due to Xenon and gamma ray degradation.
With LFTRs, Xenon gas is easily removed chemically during operation and the molten salts are impervious to gamma rays and convert about 99% of thorium to energy; 200 TIMES more efficient than solid fuel reactors, and much safer, too.
The West needs to follow China’s lead in getting LFTR’s quickly developed and rolled out.
Smithy your thought experiment speaks volumes about your level of sophistication related to Earth’s intrinsic climate and weather-related variables. This “ball” we live on is so much more than that. Including the atmosphere, we could spend the rest of this species of humanity measuring the obvious intrinsic variables that change each day, month, season, year, decade, and over the centuries. We would have to leave to the next human species to study the less obvious ones. The Sun’s variations in terms of what gets down to our level, measured quite well in rocks, shows amazingly steady output. So let’s measure the obvious variables here on Earth first. K?
In NE Oregon, we are experiencing the influence of pressure systems interacting with a very loopy Jet Stream, which is partially driven by pressure systems elsewhere. Basically the result gives us occasional daytime high temperature records with nightime low records. Why? Low humidity combined with strong radiative cooling. We are also paradoxically experiencing some low daytime temp records right next door to an area that is experiencing high daytime records. Why? When an area experiences strong vertical mixing, we get cold upper air mixed in with warmer air at the surface, keeping us cold even on a clear day. If the loop in the Jet Stream and dual pressure systems stick around, we could have, overall, one of the coldest, dryest Springs on record, with the odd high daytime record here and there. We could also dip into the records for temperature spread in a 24 hour period. None of this, none of this, is caused by a changing Sun. It is all intrinsic to Earth’s own fickle nature.
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Alexander Feht,
An excellent point. The best overall result for objective science is achieved by having a multitude of fundamentally independent funding sources that are competing for the honors of being the sponsor of the first/best observationally verified understanding of climate.
The biases in the climate science from each funding source could then more easily identifiable through comparisons by another set of individuals who are independent of any funding source (like volunteer unaffiliated auditors).
We should establish the Independent Academe of Unaffiliated Science Auditors (IAUSA).
Who wants to be a charter member?
John
@Pamela Grey; We are discussing climate, not weather. Learn the difference.
Steve Keohane says: Your link to maps of hummingbird migration are disappointing. There is nothing west of the Mississippi River. I live in Western Colorado, and watch for their return and departure annually. We usually have them by 4/20…none yet this year. Noticed in 2011, they left 2-3 weeks early, and we havd sub-zero temperatures two months later, 2-3 week earlier than usual. They seem to have some prescience about the near future.
There’s a reason why that ruby-throat migration map doesn’t include Colorado: That’s not part of their range. There are two or three species of hummingbird that transit/nest in the Colorado mountain west, but the ruby-throat hummingbird is not one of the.
If the climate goes this way, it will be a very nasty time. As I told someone who was wailing about the “retreat” of glaciers and such due to climate change, “It’s all in good fun when the glacier is retreating, it’s when the glacier is advancing that you have to worry.”
You don’t need any change in the sun’s output for the earth to have a cooling period. Hint: Glacial periods.
For those who think fertilization will help us through “cooling” times, one must keep in mind, that fertilizers are only required during “vigorous” growth. Without vigorous growth, fertilizer use will only accelerate decomposition. It takes warm temperatures to induce the growth, which then requires more nutrients. GK
An aside, for those able to work on the mathematics of turbulence and thermodynamics, this guy claims to have solved the 3D Navier-Stokes equation and has submitted for the Clay Prize:
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~phildept/files/CV_Muriel.pdf
He’s not currently affiliated with the Math or Physics depts. at Harvard but with the Philosophy Dept. Don’t know if his claim of a successful solution is true or what the implications might be, but I have seen it stated that Navier-Stokes equations become quite unworkable when the complexities of climate are involved??
It seems to be an accepted fact that periods of global cooling cause more mass extinctions than do warming cycles. As to predictions, back in 1981 I was posted in the tiny Native Alaskan village of Golovin, a Yupik and Inuit community. One of the village elders had a joke on me as we walked the one street through town. He said: “Teacher, I think it is going to be a really cold and long winter this year. Look at the pile of firewood behind that white man’s house!”
The SS24 Wolf/Wolfer number in Archibald’s graph seems high when compared to Layman’s Sunspot numbers.
I read some time ago, that a Scientist, (I forget their Nationality) basically said something approximately along the lines of ‘Never mind Global Warming, It’s Global COOLING that we should be worrying about’.
Does the content of this Post emphasise that?.
This paper connects the solar magnetic cycle changes to the cyclic warming and cooling in the paleoclimatic record.
http://cio.eldoc.ub.rug.nl/FILES/root/1999/QuatSciRevvGeel/1999QuatSciRevvGeel.pdf
“The role of solar forcing upon climate change”
When solar activity is high, the extended solar magnetic field sweeps through interplanetary space, thereby more effectively shielding the Earth from cosmic rays and reducing the production of 14C. Low solar activity lets more cosmic rays enter the Earth’s atmosphere, producing more 14C. So the 14C record is a good proxy for the solar radiant output (Bard et al., 1997).
However, explaining the observed changes in 14C concentration by production-rate variations alone is too simple an assumption, the more so when rapid 14C concentration changes appear to be coincident with significant changes in climate. … …However, if we observe sudden, major 14C increases like the ones starting at c. 850 cal. BC and at c. 1600 AD (about 20 per mil), it is hard to imagine any change in the global carbon cycle that can bring about such a drastic fast change, simply because there is no reservoir of carbon with higher 14C concentration available anywhere on Earth. Even a sudden stop of the upwelling of old carbon-containing deep water could not cause the sudden (within decades) 14C concentration increases that are documented in the dendrochronological records. So, if we observe that such a sudden 14C increase, which must be caused by a production increase, is accompanied by indications for a change towards colder or wetter climate, this may indicate that solar forcing of the climate does exist. In theory, increased production of cosmogenic isotopes can also have a cause of cosmic origin such as a nearby supernova (Sonnett et al., 1987). We consider this scenario unlikely, and note here that events such as the 850 cal. BC peak are present in the dendrochronological curve with a periodicity of about 2400 years (Stuiver and Braziunas, 1989; see below).
“A number of those Holocene climate cooling phases… most likely of a global nature (eg Magney, 1993; van Geel et al, 1996; Alley et al 1997; Stager & Mayewski, 1997) … the cooling phases seem to be part of a millennial-scale climatic cycle operating independent of the glacial-interglacial cycles (which are) forced (perhaps paced) by orbit variations.”
“… we show here evidence that the variation in solar activity is a cause for the millennial scale climate change.”
Last 40 kyrs
Figure 2 in paper. (From data last 40 kyrs)… “conclude that solar forcing of climate, as indicated by high BE10 values, coincided with cold phases of Dansgaar-Oeschger events as shown in O16 records”
Recent Solar Event
“Maunder Minimum (1645-1715) “…coincides with one of the coldest phases of the Little Ice Age… (van Geel et al 1998b)
Periodicity
“Mayewski et al (1997) showed a 1450 yr periodicity in C14 … from tree rings and …from glaciochemicial series (NaCl & Dust) from the GISP2 ice core … believed to reflect changes in polar atmospheric circulation..”
William:
There is however a missing piece to the mechanism. The geomagnetic field abruptly changes also abruptly changes when there are climate changes. As this paper notes, the geomagnetic field intensity also modulates the amount of galactic cosmic rays (mostly high speed protons) that strike the earth’s surface. (The GCR create heavy electrons MUONs which in turn create ions in the atmosphere. Ions increase the effectiveness of low level cloud formation, effect the lifetime of low level clouds, and effect the albedo of low level clouds in a manner that cools the planet when there are more GCR all else being equal.)
The geomagnetic specialists have in the last 10 years found the geomagnetic field is cyclically and abruptly changing and that the changes correlate with planetary climate change. This change is anomalous as there is no liquid core based mechanism that can change the geomagnetic field as quickly and as often as the record shows it has changed. The observed rapid cyclic geomagnetic field changes are a paradox in that there is no physical explanation for what causes them if the explanation is limited to a liquid core mechanism.
Planetary climate change correlates with these rapid unexplained geomagnetic field changes and as the above paper notes solar magnetic cycle changes correlate with the climate changes, over and over again.
Now what is curious or I guess expected as it appears we are going to experience a Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle or a Heinrich cycle, is the North magnetic field drift velocity suddenly in the mid 1990 increased in velocity from 15 km/year (it has been moving at 10 to 15 km per year for the last 150 years) to 55 km to 60 km years.
It appears the sun is causing first part of the climate change and is causing the abrupt changes to the geomagnetic. If this assertion is correct, something is fundamentally incorrect with the assumption concerning the origin of the solar magnetic cycle and something fundamental related to the sun.
If I understand the mechanisms the planet will cool significantly (Svensmark’s mechanism will start to work again when the North magnetic pole drift velocity starts to slow.)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/16/earths-ionosphere-drops-to-a-new-low/
Boundary Between Earth’s Upper Atmosphere And Space Has Moved To Extraordinarily Low Altitudes, NASA Instruments Document
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010EO510001/pdf
What Caused Recent Acceleration of the North Magnetic Pole Drift?
The north magnetic pole (NMP) is the point at the Earth’s surface where the geomagnetic field is directed vertically downward. It drifts in time as a result of core convection, which sustains the Earth’s main magnetic field through the geodynamo process. During the 1990s the NMP drift speed suddenly increased from 15 kilometers per year at the start of the decade to 55 kilometers per year by the decade’s end. This acceleration was all the more surprising given that the NMP drift speed had remained less than 15 kilometers per year over the previous 150 years of observation…. ….Why did NMP drift accelerate in the 1990s? Answering this question may require revising a long-held assumption about processes in the core at the origin of fluctuations in the intensity and direction of the Earth’s magnetic field on decadal to secular time scales, and hints at the existence of a hidden plume rising within the core under the Arctic.
http://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/home/files/Courtillot07EPSL.pdf
Are there connections between the Earth’s magnetic field and climate? Vincent Courtillot, Yves Gallet, Jean-Louis Le Mouël, Frédéric Fluteau, Agnès Genevey
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/BardPapers/responseCourtillotEPSL07.pdf
Response to Comment on “Are there connections between Earth’s magnetic field and climate?, Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., 253, 328–339, 2007” by Bard, E., and Delaygue, M., Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., in press, 2007
Also, we wish to recall that evidence of a correlation between archeomagnetic jerks and cooling events (in a region extending from the eastern North Atlantic to the Middle East) now covers a period of 5 millenia and involves 10 events (see f.i. Figure 1 of Gallet and Genevey, 2007). The climatic record uses a combination of results from Bond et al (2001), history of Swiss glaciers (Holzhauser et al, 2005) and historical accounts reviewed by Le Roy Ladurie (2004). Recent high-resolution paleomagnetic records (e.g. Snowball and Sandgren, 2004; St-Onge et al., 2003) and global geomagnetic field modeling (Korte and Constable, 2006) support the idea that part of the centennial-scale fluctuations in 14C production may have been influenced by previously unmodeled rapid dipole field variations. In any case, the relationship between climate, the Sun and the geomagnetic field could be more complex than previously imagined. And the previous points allow the possibility for some connection between the geomagnetic field and climate over these time scales.
William: The geomagnetic excursion correlate in time with the Heinrich events which correlate in time with both the termination of the glacial period and the termination of the interglacial period. (The solar magnetic cycle restart can reinforce or attempt to reverse the current state of the geomagnetic field depending on the orbital parameters (depends on whether the Northern or Southern hemisphere is pointing toward the sun at perihelion.) at the time in which the solar magnetic cycle restarts.)
http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/416/1/gubbinsd4.pdf
Is the geodynamo process intrinsically unstable?
Recent palaeomagnetic studies suggest that excursions of the geomagnetic field, during which the intensity drops suddenly by a factor of 5 to 10 and the local direction changes dramatically, are more common than previously expected. The `normal’ state of the geomagnetic field, dominated by an axial dipole, seems to be interrupted every 30 to 100 kyr; it may not therefore be as stable as we thought. We have investigated a possible mechanism for the instability of the geodynamo by calculating the critical Rayleigh number (Rc) for the onset of convection in a rotating spherical shell permeated by an imposed magnetic field with both toroidal and poloidal components.
Hi Tom,
My understanding is that it’s not the fluctuations in energy within UV and EUV bands across solar cycles that impact the climate in any significant way, as this is minimal in W/m2 terms. It’s the <chemical reactions with UV in the ionosphere that cause changes in ozone concentration, affect polar vortices and night jets, which may then affect surface termperatures to a far greater degree than the simple energy fluctuations.
The correlation of global surface temperatures to solar cycles is better over a longer period than that to CO2, but any causation has not yet been demonstrated strongly enough. Going beyond just the physics and looking at the chemistry too, in sufficient detail, may improve our understanding of how solar changes cause terrestrial changes. I wonder if anyone knows how many grants the NSF has given to any such studies, compared to those granted to studies ‘demonstrating’ the impact of CO2-driven changes?
The first time I read about this, and the Danes were on board with some ideas, was back in 1992 as they predicted this cycle would collapse and the next would be nil. At that time it was well above my pay grade as far as paying attention to it. Needless to say with the Triple Crown of cooling that I got harassed for by alot of people that dont see things our way, by 07 I woke up. The biggest point I read back in 1992 was the USSR scientists believe SS 24 would tank.. NASA in 2006 was saying opposite. Perhaps Hansen should have paid more attention to what he should have been, rather than the drivel he has driven home. The sun, the oceans, stochastic events are the symphony of climate and the sun conducts the grand orchestra. Cue the Moody Blues, a question of Balance, and none of it having to do with Al Gore thinks it does
Hey Pamela, pay no attention to the 43,000 sheep that died this Spring in Northern Ireland from snow drifts and delayed Spring. That report came out today.
Bruce Cobb
Have to agree with Greg here. One can’t condemn the ‘alarmists’ for jumping onto a few 10ths of a degree change upwards as a sign of impending doom whilst promoting a possible few tenths down as an equally valid sign of impending doom.
The alarmists have 15u EM on their side. On that at least most of us can agree. What The Sun will do next seems to be a ‘stick you finger in the air and place your bet’ kind of prediction. There is no ‘predictive science’ behind those ‘bets’. Sure, somebody will be right but only because everybody in the field has placed a bet on every possible horse in the race. Barring disaster, somebody will look like a winner when the race is over. Hardly Science though is it?
Lonnie E. Schubert
Have to disagree. Are you suggesting that the first time anybody wondered about putting a Human on the Moon was somehow the point at which we should mark the beginning of ‘The Space Race”? We couldn’t do it in the 13thC because we didn’t have the technology.
We have known that Fusion is very real since we detonated the first Hydrogen Bomb. It may well be decades before our technology can deal with the engineering problems. Or not. But that shouldn’t stop us from exploring that particular avenue. I find your attitude even more strange given the subject of the TLP.
I’ve been saying this for years, but I see the IPCC and CAGW climatologists keeping with their “climate change” meme and blaming any future global cooling on anthropogenic causes, i.e. primarily aerosol increasing albedo and “overwhelming” CO2 forcing..
The storyline will simply move from CAGW to CAGC…. Both climatic cycles represent “change”, so the IPCC won’t even have to change their letterhead.
Many of the current players tried advocating CAGC in the 70’s, but abandoned it once the climate chqnged and started warming up in the 80’s.
I realize such an insidious plan seems to defy: science, logic, reason, common sense and ethics, but since when have these factors been an impediment to CAGW advocates in the MSM, politics and academia?
It’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out.
Dr K.A. Rodgers says:
April 29, 2013 at 3:38 pm
I see little difference in speculation about a warm future or an impeding ice age. Both are based on equally flawed half-science. I sometimes wonder whether the entrails of today’s computers give any better answer to what lies ahead than do those of chickens of yesteryear.
There are matters of likelihood based on what we do know of the past. If earth’s climate continues to behave as it has for the few 100 ka, then the strongest cycle or quasicycle is that of the glacial – interstadial pattern. The pattern consists of long periods of gradual cooling leading to glacial and ice sheet formation, punctuated by abrupt, geologically short, warming interstadial periods with glacial retreat and ice sheet loss. At the moment we’re in an interstadial. Based upon past geological history, we are on the declining end of the interstadial, already sliding toward an other glacial. The long term trend spanning the last 8,000-9,000 years indicates that the planet does indeed appear to be cooling. It is worth noting that Arrhenius speculated that human releases of CO2 might interrupt or break this pattern, which is the ultimate origin of the present CAGW scare.
The question comes down to whether, as the AGW hypothesis assumes, anthropogenic CO2 is adequate to break this cycle, or if as the sceptical view has it, our contribution of CO2 is of negligible effect.
The SC-24 predictions are several standard deviations below the very lowest predictions. Will the SC-25 prediction now notably lacking in appearance expand their standard deviations? Sorry but based upon +1 SD max consensus to -1 SD min consensus it appears that the NOAA solar cycle experts are incompetent.
another good read same subject
http://personal.inet.fi/tiede/tilmari/sunspots.html#
Pamela-
You sureness in your model that inputs into rocks over a very short time span in global and solar terms represent and prove the sun is not variable shows an arrogance and misunderstanding of millennial timescales and solar variability. Go study some other stars, live a few million years, and develop a good model of variability proven by actual observation over that time period and get back to me.
Oh, you can’t? Hmmmm, me thinks thou dost protest too much and place far too much faith into far too little data.