![latest_512_4500[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/latest_512_450011.jpg?w=300&resize=240%2C240)
It’s known by climatologists as the ‘Little Ice Age’, a period in the 1600s when harsh winters across the UK and Europe were often severe.
The severe cold went hand in hand with an exceptionally inactive sun, and was called the Maunder solar minimum.
Now a leading scientist from Reading University has told me that the current rate of decline in solar activity is such that there’s a real risk of seeing a return of such conditions.
I’ve been to see Professor Mike Lockwood to take a look at the work he has been conducting into the possible link between solar activity and climate patterns.
According to Professor Lockwood the late 20th century was a period when the sun was unusually active and a so called ‘grand maximum’ occurred around 1985.
Since then the sun has been getting quieter.
By looking back at certain isotopes in ice cores, he has been able to determine how active the sun has been over thousands of years.
Following analysis of the data, Professor Lockwood believes solar activity is now falling more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years.
He found 24 different occasions in the last 10,000 years when the sun was in exactly the same state as it is now – and the present decline is faster than any of those 24.
Based on his findings he’s raised the risk of a new Maunder minimum from less than 10% just a few years ago to 25-30%.
And a repeat of the Dalton solar minimum which occurred in the early 1800s, which also had its fair share of cold winters and poor summers, is, according to him, ‘more likely than not’ to happen.
He believes that we are already beginning to see a change in our climate – witness the colder winters and poor summers of recent years – and that over the next few decades there could be a slide to a new Maunder minimum.
It’s worth stressing that not every winter would be severe; nor would every summer be poor. But harsh winters and unsettled summers would become more frequent.
Professor Lockwood doesn’t hold back in his description of the potential impacts such a scenario would have in the UK.
He says such a change to our climate could have profound implications for energy policy and our transport infrastructure.
Although the biggest impact of such solar driven change would be regional, like here in the UK and across Europe, there would be global implications too.
According to research conducted by Michael Mann in 2001, a vociferous advocate of man-made global warming, the Maunder minimum of the 1600s was estimated to have shaved 0.3C to 0.4C from global temperatures.
It is worth stressing that most scientists believe long term global warming hasn’t gone away. Any global cooling caused by this natural phenomenon would ultimately be temporary, and if projections are correct, the long term warming caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases would eventually swamp this solar-driven cooling.
But should North Western Europe be heading for a new “little ice age”, there could be far reaching political implications – not least because global temperatures may fall enough, albeit temporarily, to eliminate much of the warming which has occurred since the 1950s.
You can see more on Inside Out on Monday 28th October on BBC1, at 7.30pm.
###
From http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/posts/Real-risk-of-a-Maunder-minimum-Little-Ice-Age-says-leading-scientist
==============================================================
Back in 2011, Lockwood said something totally dissimilar:
“The Little Ice Age wasn’t really an ice age of any kind – the idea that Europe had a relentless sequence of cold winters is frankly barking” – Dr Mike Lockwood Reading University
From: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/10/bbc-the-little-ice-age-was-all-about-solar-uv-variability-wasnt-an-ice-age-at-all/
I have a follow-on article coming up on UV observations in a couple of hours, don’t miss it.
Meanwhile the sun has recently gotten more active in the last couple of weeks, indicating a possible second peak in the current solar cycle is upon us, see details on the WUWT Solar reference page – Anthony
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@Steven Mosher
“…start with the known laws of physics. ..”
——————————————
But those are exactly what the “basic physics” of the “settled science” ignored.
1. Adding radiative gases to the atmosphere will not reduce the atmospheres radiative cooling ability.
2. Incident LWIR cannot heat nor slow the cooling rate of liquid water that is free to evaporativly cool.
3. The speed of tropospheric convective circulation and thereby mechanical energy transport from the surface is increased by increasing atmospheric concentration of radiative gases.
“Then it must have been a very bad analogy…”
Or a very bad listener.
ggoodknight says:
October 28, 2013 at 3:11 pm
“Then it must have been a very bad analogy…”
Or a very bad listener.
I know myself. You cannot be a judge of my listening. If I with best effort don’t get it, chances are good that reasonable and attentive people will get the wrong idea about what is going on. And that therefore the analogy was objectively bad. Since it is not your analogy this should not upset you [as you obviously interpreted it wrongly proving my point].
“…. solar-driven cooling”.
LOL — Contradictio in adjecto.
andrew says:
October 28, 2013 at 11:10 am
“Am I the only person in the UK surprised that as soon as the government threatens to cut funding to the BBC. Alternative stories regarding the future of the planets weather suddenly appear. “
I agree with Stephen Fox. Paul has been his own man for many years. For example the following:
What happened to global warming? (9 October 2009)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8299079.stm
Steven Mosher says:
October 28, 2013 at 12:06 pm
An interesting (and very different) approach to modelling:
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/new-climate-model/
##########
Its so bad its not even wrong.
———————
well that’s patently false.
It has limited utility, but utility nonetheless.
Our colleague Tamitha Skov has been producing excellent space weather and forecasting videos on her own time. The latest involves the recent solar activity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbrtIBja-Qs
The warmists have ignored the fact there are cycles of warming and cooling that correlate with solar magnetic cycle changes. The warming and cooling cycles affect both hemispheres simultaneous. As internal climate forcing cycles do not affect both hemispheres and are chaotic and hence are not cyclical unless driven by an external cyclic forcing function they cannot cause what is observed.
This paper for example notes there are 340 climate cycles in the last 240,000 years during which time the Antarctic Peninsula warmed and then cooled. As the paper notes the temperature of Antarctic Peninsula has been shown to be closely linked with the Southern Ocean temperature. The 340 climate cycles have a periodicity of 1500 years and 400 years which matches a cyclic warming and cooling cycle that is also observed in the Northern hemisphere. The amount of warming in the past cycles is the same or greater than the warming that has been observed on Antarctic Peninsula in the last 50 years.
The fact the climate cycle occurs in both glacial and interglacial period (the internal climate forcing functions are very different for glacial and interglacial periods due to affect of the ice sheets), affects both hemisphere simultaneously, and correlates with solar magnetic cycle changes all support the assertion that the solar magnetic cycle changes are causing what is observed.
It should be noted that this is no longer a theoretical, modeling issue. The solar magnetic cycle has changed very quickly. Based on what has happened before the planet will cool. It is significantly easier to discover exactly how the solar magnetic cycle changes causes cooling if there is direct measurement of the cooling rather than attempting to solve the problem using proxies. The scientific community and the interested public will by observations determine how much of the warming in the last 50 years was due to the increase in atmospheric CO2 and how much is due to solar magnetic cycle changes.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/davis-and-taylor-wuwt-submission.pdf
Davis and Taylor: “Does the current global warming signal reflect a natural cycle”
…We found 342 natural warming events (NWEs) corresponding to this definition, distributed over the past 250,000 years …. …. The 342 NWEs contained in the Vostok ice core record are divided into low-rate warming events (LRWEs; < 0.74oC/century) and high rate warming events (HRWEs; ≥ 0.74oC /century) (Figure). … ….The current global warming signal is therefore the slowest and among the smallest in comparison with all HRWEs in the Vostok record, although the current warming signal could in the coming decades yet reach the level of past HRWEs for some parameters. The figure shows the most recent 16 HRWEs in the Vostok ice core data during the Holocene, interspersed with a number of LRWEs. …. ….We were delighted to see the paper published in Nature magazine online (August 22, 2012 issue) reporting past climate warming events in the Antarctic similar in amplitude and warming rate to the present global warming signal. The paper, entitled "Recent Antarctic Peninsula warming relative to Holocene climate and ice – shelf history" and authored by Robert Mulvaney and colleagues of the British Antarctic Survey ( Nature , 2012, doi:10.1038/nature11391),reports two recent natural warming cycles, one around 1500 AD and another around 400 AD, measured from isotope (deuterium) concentrations in ice cores bored adjacent to recent breaks in the ice shelf in northeast Antarctica. ….
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=24476
Glacial Records Depict Ice Age Climate in Synch Worldwide
William Astley says:
October 28, 2013 at 3:54 pm
The warming and cooling cycles affect both hemispheres simultaneous.
which explains why the Arctic Ice Cover has been decreasing while the Antarctic Ice cover has been increasing…
I wonder if anyone has yet calculated the time lag between Mother Nature and the mainstream media. It’s good to see some alternative stories out of the BBC, but this conversation has been going on for the best part of this solar cycle.
BBC & Mike Loskwood
Tuesday, 21 April 2009:
Climate sceptics have gone further arguing that the Sun – rather than man’s activities – may be the main driver of climate change. The argument came to a head with the broadcast of Channel 4′s The Great Global Warming Swindle in 2007, which focused on the cosmic ray theory.
But speaking on the programme this morning Mike Lockwood from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory said the cycle of the Sun’s activity didn’t fit with the longer term trend towards global warming.
Solar activity began to tail off in the mid 1980′s – a period of steadily rising temperatures. If the Sun was responsible for global warming we would have seen a much more marked decline by now.
Dr Lockwood believes the latest data settles the debate. The Sun has an impact on global temperatures, but it’s not enough to account for climate change.
“If the Sun’s dimming were to have a cooling effect, we’d have seen it by now,” he says.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/today/tomfeilden/2009/04/could_a_cooling_sun_save_the_p.html
Sigh.
“Since it is not your analogy this should not upset you [as you obviously interpreted it wrongly proving my point].”
No, I did not interpret it wrongly; you made assumptions about my description that were neither stated or intended. It was a bloody throwaway line for me; you might go argue with the science Ed people at NASA as I found by googling, they’re apparently still using the same analogy.
I’m just a lowly BS Physics/MSEE grunt, not worth your effort. Move along.
lsvalgaard says:
October 28, 2013 at 3:34 pm
Our colleague Tamitha Skov has been producing excellent space weather and forecasting videos on her own time. The latest involves the recent solar activity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbrtIBja-Qs
She is a bit too early; all the action came 2-3 days later
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_c2.gif
> mwhite says:
> October 28, 2013 at 11:49 am
>> gopal panicker says:
>> October 28, 2013 at 9:16 am
>>
>> the little ice age we know about…how does the professor
>> get the solar data for the last 10,000 years ?
>>
>> Try this
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sunspots_11000_years.svg
That led me on a bit of a chase. The document you want is…
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/climate_forcing/solar_variability/solanki2004-ssn.txt Note that zero year for the data is 1950. i.e. the calendar AD year, Yad, is related to the
BP year, Ybp, as Yc=1950-Ybp.
ggoodknight says:
October 28, 2013 at 4:29 pm
It was a bloody throwaway line for me
You seem attached to it, nevertheless.
science Ed people at NASA as I found by googling, they’re apparently still using the same analogy
That does not make it good. It is still lousy.
you made assumptions about my description that were neither stated or intended
My assumption was that you thought it was a good analogy, if I was wrong about that, we seem to agree that the analogy was poor. And so we can move along.
“He says such a change to our climate could have profound implications for energy policy and our transport infrastructure.”
And even bigger challenges for farmers. UK farmers face unprecedented levels of debt since the poor summer of 2012. and are facing more cuts:
http://www.fwi.co.uk/articles/24/10/2013/141674/call-for-direct-farm-payments-to-be-cut-by-15.htm
More frequent cold and wet growing seasons could put many out of business.
According to the warmists, the heat will be hiding in the sun. But when it’s finally released, it’ll be enough to boil the atmosphere.
Hmm.. Shows his “research” includes fingers in ears going la la la la la la and ignoring paintings of the era depicting ice fairs on the Thames for many winters.
Amazing Lockwood is “discovering” cooling, that Leroux had figured out 20 years ago through understanding atmospheric circulation… Oh well, credit will never be given, as usual.
“Perhaps two distinct and opposing climate science camps will evolve, one supporting global warming and the other supporting global cooling.”
Treat them as an ensemble. Average them together. Voila! No change predicted. So obviously they are good models.
If we have just a couple of 1960s-style winters, AGW propaganda is OVER.
Surely a ‘vociferous advocate’ of global warming is one who pleads loudly in its favour and thinks that it is a wonderful thing. Are linguistic standards at eh BBC dropping, or have they uncovered some hidden irony?
In reply to:
lsvalgaard says:
October 28, 2013 at 3:59 pm
William Astley says:
October 28, 2013 at 3:54 pm
The warming and cooling cycles affect both hemispheres simultaneous.
which explains why the Arctic Ice Cover has been decreasing while the Antarctic Ice cover has been increasing…
William:
You need climate 101, an explanation of the polar see-saw. Note Antarctic sea ice has suddenly increased for all months were previously it was higher only for certain months.
The “polar see-saw” caused the first increase in Antarctic sea ice. The entire planet warmed in the last 50 years except for the Antarctic ice sheet which cooled, slightly. When the planet warms due to solar magnetic cycle change the entire planet will warm except for the Antarctic ice sheet which will cool slightly. (The cooling of Antarctic ice sheet is shown in a graph that Wattsup’s ice link.)
The physical cause of the polar see-saw is the albedo of the Antarctic ice sheet is slightly greater than low level clouds, therefore as clouds also warm due to the greenhouse effect of their water vapor a reduction in low level clouds causes the Antarctic ice sheet to cool and the surrounding Southern ocean to warm. The cooling of the Antarctic ice sheet caused there to be an increase in sea ice but not for all months. The warming of the Southern sea caused the warming of the Antarctic Peninsula which due to its extension into the Southern sea warms when the Southern sea warms.
In the Northern hemisphere the albedo of the Arctic sea ice and Greenland ice sheet is less than low level clouds and there is not a strong polar vortex that separate the ice from the surrounding ocean so a decrease in low level clouds causes the Arctic and Greenland Ice sheet to warm.
There is now an increase in low clouds in the Arctic which caused the lowest summer Arctic temperatures in 50 years and there is an increase in low level clouds in the Antarctic which caused their to be anomalously cold temperatures of the Southern Ocean which in turn caused there to high sea ice around the Antarctic for all months of the year.
This shows the cold Arctic summer temperatures.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
This shows the anomalously cold water around the Antarctic which is causing the increase in sea ice all months.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2013/anomnight.10.28.2013.gif
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_stddev_timeseries.png
This is Svensmark’s paper that explains the polar anomaly and provides data to support a cloud modulation mechanism to explain why it occurs.
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0612145v1
The Antarctic climate anomaly and galactic cosmic rays
Borehole temperatures in the ice sheets spanning the past 6000 years show Antarctica repeatedly warming when Greenland cooled, and vice versa (Fig. 1) [13, 14]. North-south oscillations of greater amplitude associated with Dansgaard-Oeschger events are evident in oxygenisotope data from the Wurm-Wisconsin glaciation[15]. The phenomenon has been called the polar see-saw[15, 16], but that implies a north-south symmetry that is absent. Greenland is better coupled to global temperatures than Antarctica is, and the fulcrum of the temperature swings is near the Antarctic Circle. A more apt term for the effect is the Antarctic climate anomaly. … ….Attempts to account for it have included the hypothesis of a south-flowing warm ocean current crossing the Equator[17] with a built-in time lag supposedly intended to match paleoclimatic data. That there is no significant delay in the Antarctic climate anomaly is already apparent at the high-frequency end of Fig. (1). While mechanisms involving ocean currents might help to intensify or reverse the effects of climate changes, they are too slow to explain the almost instantaneous operation of the Antarctic climate anomaly.
Figure (2a) also shows that the polar warming effect of clouds is not symmetrical, being most pronounced beyond 75◦S. In the Arctic it does no more than offset the cooling effect, despite the fact that the Arctic is much cloudier than the Antarctic (Fig. (2b)). The main reason for the difference seems to be the exceptionally high albedo of Antarctica in the absence of clouds.
“It is worth stressing that most scientists believe long term global warming hasn’t gone away.”
No it isn’t. Please, provide an accurate census that backs up that assertion of what “most scientists” believe.
William Astley says:
October 28, 2013 at 8:46 pm
The entire planet warmed in the last 50 years except for the Antarctic ice sheet which cooled, slightly.
Forget your ‘slightly’ and forget Svensmark. The cooling is a large effect:
“The last deglaciation: timing the bipolar seesaw” by Pedro, J. B.; et al.
Climate of the Past, Volume 7, Issue 2, 2011, pp.671-683, 2011
Abstract
Precise information on the relative timing of north-south climate variations is a key to resolving questions concerning the mechanisms that force and couple climate changes between the hemispheres. We present a new composite record made from five well-resolved Antarctic ice core records that robustly represents the timing of regional Antarctic climate change during the last deglaciation. Using fast variations in global methane gas concentrations as time markers, the Antarctic composite is directly compared to Greenland ice core records, allowing a detailed mapping of the inter-hemispheric sequence of climate changes. Consistent with prior studies the synchronized records show that warming (and cooling) trends in Antarctica closely match cold (and warm) periods in Greenland on millennial timescales. For the first time, we also identify a sub-millennial component to the inter-hemispheric coupling. Within the Antarctic Cold Reversal the strongest Antarctic cooling occurs during the pronounced northern warmth of the Bølling. Warming then resumes in Antarctica, potentially as early as the Intra-Allerød Cold Period, but with dating uncertainty that could place it as late as the onset of the Younger Dryas stadial. There is little-to-no time lag between climate transitions in Greenland and opposing changes in Antarctica. Our results lend support to fast acting inter-hemispheric coupling mechanisms, including recently proposed bipolar atmospheric teleconnections and/or rapid bipolar ocean teleconnections.