Guest essay by David Archibald
The Maunder Minimum was not completely devoid of sunspots, as shown by the following graphic using data from SIDC. Will global warming be attenuated due to our current low solar activity?
In a comment on a previous post, a Mr B. Fagan notes that the authors of the solar physics paper quoted say “As a consequence, the increase of global warming will be slightly attenuated until 2100 A.D. However, the subsequent increase in solar activity will further enhance the global warming.”
He plaintively asks why the conclusion that global warming will overwhelm whatever the Sun might do is ignored.
Well, the reason it is ignored is because all solar physics papers that touch on climate have the same sort of wording, for exactly the same reason. For example, here’s a Usoskin et al. paper in which at the end of the abstract they say “Although the rarity of the current episode of high average sunspot numbers may indicate that the Sun has contributed to the unusual climate change during the twentieth century, we point out that solar variability is unlikely to have been the dominant cause of the strong warming during the past three decades.” It is like reading Pravda in Soviet times. You ignore the Party line and read between the lines.
The price of getting published in solar physics is abjuring any role for the Sun in climate. Solar physicists will start giving that up over the next couple of years with the sharp step down in temperature that is underway because otherwise they will run reputational risk for ignoring the obvious. In the meantime they stoically bear the humiliation of having to utter these inanities.
What if you are a normal climate scientist, doing the usual modelling and so on, and you want to get the message out about the effects of the cold climate coming? Well, that requires some mental gymnastics. But it has been done. Professor John Kutzbach of the University of Wisconsin shows how. In the CIA climate report of 1974 predicting severe cooling and a return to the climate of the neo-arboreal era (1600-1850), he is mentioned on page 24. Forty years later, Professor Kutzbach is still at the University of Wisconsin and still warning of cooling. In 2010, he was the co-author of a paper which investigated the effect of a 3.1°C temperature decline on plant productivity. The basis of the 3.1°C assumption was the low carbon dioxide levels of the glacial periods.
Saying the magic words “The Sun can’t have caused the warming” is enough to get most solar physicists published. Others have to recant in public if their findings proved to be inconvenient. For example, in 2011 Dr Richard Altrock published a paper in which he said that, based on observations of the green coronal emissions of the Sun, Solar Cycle 24 was 40% slower than the average of the previous two cycles. This would have a significant effect on climate through Friis-Christensen and Lassen theory. That was followed in 2012 by a paper in which he said that some data had been overlooked in the 2011 paper and that Solar Cycle 24 was back to normal. He hasn’t published his diagram again since.
As far as I can tell, the first solar physicists to suggest that we are heading into a Maunder Minimum were Schatten and Tobiska in 2003. From their abstract,” The surprising result of these long-range predictions is a rapid decline in solar activity, starting with cycle #24. If this trend continues, we may see the Sun heading towards a “Maunder” type of solar activity minimum – an extensive period of reduced levels of solar activity.”
Others on their own efforts have subsequently attempted to untangle the solar record and derive a prediction from it. Thus Steinhilber and Beer, and from the tree rings, Libby and Pandolfi and the Finnish foresters. All are pointing down, steeply down from now. By the time of the CIA climate report in 1974, there was still a living memory of the colder years of the early 20th century, and an appreciation that humanity was in a special time of warmth and abundance. Now forty years on, the cold years that preceded the current warmth are not even a distant memory. Most think that this is the new normal.
Dikpati and Hathaway, both of NASA, in 2006 had predictions of Solar Cycle 24 amplitude of 190 and 170 respectively. In their press release, NASA said that,”Dikpati’s prediction is unprecedented.” It was also terribly wrong, possibly unprecedentedly so. Significantly, no solar physicist is now predicting a return to the high levels of activity of the second half of the 20th century. Schatten and Tobiska’s prediction of a Maunder level of activity stands, is on track, and has no competition. Everyone is well advised to plan accordingly.
David Archibald, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., is the author of Twilight of Abundance (Regnery, 2014).
Pam, hum a few bars of science and I’ll fake the rest.
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Pamela Gray says:
May 18, 2014 at 9:32 am
“James you are right of course in terms of where energy comes from that is stored in the oceans. As measured at the top of the atmosphere there is slight and predictable variation that can be mathematically modeled but not to the degree that matters on Earth’s surface. The amount that hits the ocean surface is far more drastically changed by our own atmosphere and its intrinsic ability and variability to allow it in or reflect it away”
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To many people do not understand the difference between changes in TSI and changes in insolation. It is the insolation that counts the most in changing climate with orbital mechanics being the elephant in the room.
For those who do not get it, stand outside in direct sunlight then move into the shade. You will notice a very large difference in the amount of energy that hits your skin. The Sun did not change its output during those few seconds, you changed the insolation on your skin.
It is blatantly obvious that the US needs to spend more money on the sun. We have a serious lack of federal spending in the research of solar activity and ways we can mitigate this sluggishness. We need to develop the technologies required to reinvigorate solar activity. In fact, it is very likely that the root cause of this is magnetic fields generated by power transformers. We should immediately rid ourselves of these power transformers and invest in large scale active switching power conversion products and this is going to require billions in investment and government loans. We can’t allow this to happen. (think of the children!). Fork over your cash today!
policycritic says on May 18, 2014 at 9:36 am
This is the correct link for Allan MacRae’s Kyoto debate at May 18, 2014 at 5:38 am
http://www.apega.ca//Members/Publications/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
Thank you PolicyCritic – my professional organization has changed its name and website.
It is perhaps worth repeating another excerpt from our 2002 PEGG paper, to show how little this debate has progressed in 12 years – despite a complete failure of the IPCC’s prediction of alarming global warming due to increased atmospheric CO2.
REBUTTAL OF POINT
(BY COUNTERPOINT AUTHORS – Baliunas, Patterson and MacRae)
http://www.apega.ca//Members/Publications/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
The Pembina Institute’s authors have chosen to avoid the science topic, perhaps because there is no credible scientific basis for the Kyoto Protocol.
Advocates of Kyoto mistakenly cite the United Nations IPCC 2001 report and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences 2001 report as authoritative scientific sources. Dr. Richard Lindzen, Sloan professor of meteorology at MIT and a co-author of both reports, wrote in 2001:
“We are not in a position to confidently attribute past climate change to carbon dioxide or to forecast what the climate will be in the future…
“Science, in the public arena, is commonly used as a source of authority with which to bludgeon political opponents and propagandize uninformed citizens. This is what has been done with both the reports of the IPCC and the NAS. It is a reprehensible practice that corrodes our ability to make rational decisions. A fairer view of the science will show that there is still a vast amount of uncertainty – far more than advocates of Kyoto would like to acknowledge…”
kim…I have no idea what you tried to communicate in your last comment and its connection to our discussion. You have lost me. You seem to want to rebutt my comment and you have responded now twice. I have yet to comprehend the scientific details of your rebuttal..
@ur momisugly David. Was there a graph to go with Schatten and Tobiska projections ?, its always nice to have something to look at.
mark in toledo says:
May 18, 2014 at 12:44 am
If you want the long version of this, buy my book. In the meantime, a 0.6 degree C fall from now to mid-2016, then sideways to down to the mid-2020s and then the big plunge to 2040. Then flat for a Maunder-type experience. More coming out in a couple of weeks.
Pamela Gray says:
May 18, 2014 at 10:47 am
Vuk, science must be cruel. It MUST be!
Ms Gray
Demonstrating that a work or hypothesis is wrong, cruelty is not, denial of the public voice could be harder to bear than a gulag.
J Martin says:
May 18, 2014 at 10:47 am
They talked about the SODA Index but no graphic on why they believed in weaker activity post-Solar Cycle 25.
Dr. Archibald you predicted .7C of cooling at the Canadian border for every year extra that solar cycle 23 lasted over solar cycle 22, during solar cycle 24. If this winter was any indication it appears you are correct.
So far during SC24
Coldest start up to a year in the contiguous 48 states. “Steve Goddard”
Large gain in global sea ice.
Record great lakes ice.
Record Antarctic sea ice.
Ground frozen to 2 meters in Winnipeg.
Substantial multiyear ice gain in the Arctic.
Well done sir and will be watching to see if next winter carries through on this.
Tom in Florida says:
May 18, 2014 at 10:49 am
You are all missing the point of those few sentences. NASA had a whole section, or perhaps even more than one, studying the Sun. They had people working full time on it. If not the world’s pre-eminent experts, they were up there. But they were wrong, wrong, wrong. Hathaway said he went for a high number because he expected the trend of high numbers to continue. No physical basis but it was put out as a NASA forecast. Dikpati was NASA’s star and perhaps Hathaway had to be up close to her otherwise there would be questions and internal political problems. This is about experts being wrong (hint – think IPCC and the concensus), not about three co-authors who got it right.
Reblogged this on The Next Grand Minimum and commented:
I have been writing about cooling since 2006, when I write a short paper on cooling cycles. See the discussion below. We are in the Next Grand Minimum camp as the sun spots decline.
A number of high temperature records have fallen in Calif, Alaska and Hawaii in the past few days. Probably a much larger number of US national low temperature records have been broken in the last three days. Quite a few of these records previously dated back to the early 1900’s. Record lows extend from near the Mexico border area of McAllen & Brownsville, Texas up through Kansas to North Dakota. From Brownsville they go across the Gulf Coast through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama to Florida. From Florida up through W Virginia passing Green Bay, WI. New record lows were recorded all within this large area such as Memphis, Nashville, Little Rock, St Louis, Lexington, Kansas City, Omaha etc… Many locations that are not listed here at this link to NOAA have local news stories about their record lows. There is an interesting snow season record for Rockford, IL for May 16.
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/view/national.php?prod=RER
-SXUS73 KLOT 170647
RERRFD
RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE CHICAGO IL
0145 AM CDT SAT MAY 17 2014
…RECORD DAILY MAXIMUM SNOWFALL SET AT ROCKFORD IL…
A RECORD SNOWFALL OF A TRACE WAS SET AT ROCKFORD IL
YESTERDAY…MAY 16TH.
IN ADDITION…ONLY ONCE BEFORE IN RECORDED WEATHER HISTORY FOR
ROCKFORD HAS THERE BEEN A TRACE OF SNOW IN THE SNOW SEASON ON OR
AFTER MAY 16TH AND THAT WAS ON MAY 24TH 1925.
At the beginning of the Little Ice Age (from 1200’s to 1800’s – I hardly call it little) a very large mountain almost on top of the equator in Indonesia exploded (Mt. Rinjani), sending ash eventually to the poles to be imbedded in ice and later extracted in ice cores (the composition of the ash matches that of ash from the still active volcano). Other volcanoes errupted throughout this extended period.
Many climate scientists (Mann included with his tree ring data) have discussed subsequent cooling caused by either direct processes (as in it gets colder because the sun has a big black cloud in front of it) or indirect ones such as an influx of fresh water reducing the overturning processes between fresh and salt water. Mann found that tree rings do not quite match the fairly well identified timing of eruptions. He has proposed an error in analysis related to “missing rings”. Regardless, subsequent cooling related to a volcano does not necessarily explain long term cooling as was experienced during the Little Ice Age.
However, I think there is another reason why subsequent cooling (which under current theories can only last as long as the ash remains suspended in the air in terms of direct effects) lasted for such a long time. It has to do with Tisdale’s discharge/recharge theory related to El Nino/La Nina events and oscillations. The Rinjani explosion was quite large and it was in the right spot to send ash across the Pacific along the equatorial El Nino region especially if the trades had stopped and wind bursts in the opposite direction were active. On top of El Nino related clouds, you now have ash preventing the sun from warming the equaorial ocean. And during a subsequent La Nina, when recharge is really active, again that recharge would not be happening much at all. How many months would there have to be of very little sunshine getting to ocean surface across the Pacific span when you reach a lack of recharge critical level? And how many years were there of that ash meandering around in the equatorial region, preventing the sun from recharging the oceans. Add to that the habit of volcanoes wanting to continue to burp and spew more ash from time to time, sometimes years after the big one.
Now send that less than warm water on its way circulating to the shores of the continents, bleching out what little warmth the ocean has to give, and one can imagine a fast plunge into a cold climate as well as at different start times. If the volcano continued to pulse as they often do, the ash injection gets re-upped, again continuing to cause plunging cold but at different start times globally as the now much cooler pools of water circulate thoughout the globe. Might this be the source of what is referred to as the estimation error due to missing tree rings proposed by Mann? Might this be the cause of the different results seen on the global scale? Might this be the cause of the Little Ice Age and not lack of sunspots? Certainly what little change there would be in TSI because of disappearing spots pales in comparison to changes driven by an equatorial shade pulled down over the ocean drastically reducing equatorial insolation so critical to the recharge phase of ENSO processes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rinjani
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Indonesia_(orthographic_projection).svg
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/Mann/articles/articles/jgrd50609.pdf
Busted link during cut and paste
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Indonesia_(orthographic_projection).svg
Trying again
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia
Village Idiot (May 18, 2014 at 6:46 am) says “With solar activity trending downwards for the last 50 years [..] and not a hint of the Great Cooling we have been promised“. A pot on the stove still heats when the stove is turned down a bit.
You mean this link to the map??
<a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Indonesia_%28orthographic_projection%29.svg”>this link to the map?</a>
Thanks Ric. Yes.
Pamela, that is a wonderful melody complete with lyrics. Can the Earth’s internal mechanisms generate the millennial scale changes in climate? Well, sure, but do they? I am more suspicious of the sun, but don’t have a mechanism. Cosmic rays are so seductive but it, erl, Happens, I like UV rays. The dance is on stage, but the curtain is still down, the audience fascinated and blinded.
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Pamela has the right idea.
Now extend the principle to solar induced cloudiness changes as per my New Climate Model and there you have it.
Solar induced cloudiness changes alter the amount of solar energy entering the oceans so as to skew the balance between El Nino and La Nina.
Wow. Talk about your Pacific Rim of Fire! This is quite a system! I wonder how many of them were active during the LIttle Ice Age. I can imagine a big one to get things going, then the others sputtering and spewing sometimes at the same time and sometimes serially in a 700 year time span or there abouts. The ash rises up and catches a ride on El Nino wind bursts. Right along the very area that would allow winds to carry all that ash over the equatorial band, thus pulling down the blind and blocking a recharging soak in the Sun.
http://www.volcanodiscovery.com/indonesia.html
Pamela,
There was some previous discussion of the volcanic aspect here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/30/new-paper-speculates-on-volcanoes-during-the-little-ice-age/
Towards the end you can see my comments about the importance of changes in the balance of ozone creation / destruction so as to alter the equator to pole tropopause height gradient which results in changes in global cloudiness.
Volcanic activity causes short term changes because volcanic aerosols soon drop out of the atmosphere.
For a multicentennial trend one really does need a solar influence as well.
Stephen, think. Please. In order to create the degree of insolation change that would plung us into The Little Ice Age, your solar connection would have to be very large. Imagine (or read several articles that mathematically calculate this) the insolation change created when there is a black ashy cloud blocking the sun. Now create in your mind, based on your conjecture, the amount of solar change that would have to happen (if your idea holds in conditions other than the lab experiment) in order for cosmic rays to change cloud cover sufficient to compare to the same level of ash cloud blocking insolation change.
For those wanting a peer-reviewed discussion at a level far above my head:
http://www.leif.org/EOS/Cloud%20Cover%20and%20Cosmic%20Rays.pdf