Global warming/climate change advocates want us to believe that computer models will accurately predict temperature out to the year 2100, yet NOAA, which uses computer models to predict the next seasonal outlook, couldn’t even get that right. The north, northeast, and deep south have been in a deep freeze, with blizzard like conditions, and well below normal temperatures. Temperature records have fallen all over the eastern half of the USA in the last two weeks. Meanwhile, advocates of global warming/climate change certainty, such as Al Gore and Michael Mann, took advantage of the cold snap and said have said “that’s exactly what we should expect from the climate crisis“.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, reality bites for NOAA’s short term climate prediction.
From climate.gov, excerpts of their prediction in October.
Both the temperature and precipitation outlooks lean on typical La Niña impacts, particularly those of the past 30 years, and bear some resemblance to the outlooks issued for last winter (not surprisingly since the forecast guidance is similar – more on that below). In the image above, the winter precipitation outlook favors below-normal precipitation across the entire southern U. S., with probabilities greatest (exceeding 50%) along the eastern Gulf Coast to the coasts of northern Florida, Georgia, and southern South Carolina. In contrast, above-average precipitation is more likely across much of the northern parts of the country, in the northern Rockies, around the Great Lakes, in Hawaii, and western Alaska.
The temperature outlook shown above indicates above-average temperatures across the southern US, extending northward out West through the central Rockies and all the way up to Maine in the eastern part of the nation. Above-average temperatures are also favored in Hawaii and in western and northern Alaska. Chances are greatest in an area extending from the desert Southwest to central and southern Texas and Louisiana (greater than 50%).
Probabilities are tilted toward colder-than-normal temperatures along the northern tier from the Pacific Northwest to Minnesota and also in southeastern Alaska. However, the likelihood of below-average temperatures across the North is modest, with no probabilities in these regions reaching 50%.
…
Read the full outlook here
Surprisingly, the much maligned (as being with skill according to most NOAA meteorologists) Farmers Almanac got it somewhat right with the headline:
WINTER OUTLOOK 2017–2018: COLDER THAN LAST YEAR
Overall, the long-range winter forecast for 2017–2018 shows generally colder temperatures than last winter for the U.S. and Canada but not colder than a typical winter, based on historical averages.
However, their national forecast map didn’t really do justice to the cold wave we’ve seen.
The result is that 2017–18 winter temperatures will be colder than last winter, they will likely still be above normal in the eastern and north-central states, with below-normal temperatures the rule from the Gulf States westward to California and from the Intermountain region westward to the Pacific Northwest.
The reality has been quite different than the climate forecasts.
Arctic air brings bone-chilling temperatures to US (CNN)
Arctic Outbreak Was One of the Coldest on Record For Late December Into Early January (TWC)
Parts of the central and eastern U.S. experienced one of their coldest late December through early January periods on record.
…
Dozens of other cities from the northern Rockies to Texas to the Great Lakes and East Coast had at least a top-five-coldest two-week stretch ending Jan. 5, according to the SERCC.
According to data from the Southeast Regional Climate Center, (SERCC) the following cities shivered through their record-coldest Dec. 23-Jan. 5 stretch:
- Bangor, Maine
- Worcester, Massachusetts
- Buffalo, New York
- Flint, Michigan
- Green Bay, Wisconsin
- Duluth, Minnesota
- Rockford, Illinois
- Waterloo, Iowa
- Lincoln, Nebraska
While winter is not yet over, and a warm-up is forecast for mid-week as the jet-stream changes, forecaster Joe Bastardi suggests that we’ll see more below normal weather soon afterwards.
https://twitter.com/BigJoeBastardi/status/950005857193951232
https://twitter.com/BigJoeBastardi/status/950007855314341888
UPDATE: Dr. Ryan Maue quantifies just how cold it’s been:
https://twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/950134254725451777
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Do we have a 97% consensus that it is cold?
A number of years ago I did an assessment of some Almanac forecasts.
They are 80 % correct. I checked four Almanacs. They totalled 20 + 20 + 20 + 20 = 80 %.
Last year they beat NOAA 51 to 49. It was a great game.
Both the Old Farmers Almanac and the Farmers Almanac had generally the same forecast for the first two months of winter, December and January: wet and mild.
Both of them missed the boat entirely on that score.
I’m keeping track of local stuff, and being 35 miles north of Chicago, I’m VERY interested in how this winter shapes up against the 1967 biizzard, which was forecast to be 2 inches of snow and moderate temperatures, but instead carried such a snow load that it shut down the entire city. I was living in central Illinois back then. We got the southern edge of that storm, which gave us high winds that snapped off telephone poles at their base and flipped them over, and coated phone and power lines so heavily in ice (sleet) that they sagged nearly to the ground. I have slides I shot the morning after that storm.
Sleet is not called freezing rain, for some reason. I guess one word is harder to figure out than two.
I’m also interested in how this holds up against the blizzard of February 2011, because that one trapped people in their cars on Lake Shore Drive and on unplowed county roads. The snowplow trucks were on the main roads, not the county roads that run through cornfields. For Pete’s sake, IF IT’S SNOWING AND THE ROAD ISN’T PLOWED, DON’T USE IT!!!!!
The snow from that storm drifted up against the side of my house to the bottom of the living room windows, about 9 feet, and drifted against my storm door to a height of 4.5 feet. I had to wait for one of my neighbors to dig me out. Fortunately, I went shopping and stocked up before the storm hit. Yes, I do have photos of that, too.
But it’s just weather, it does what it wants to, and what we need is good, accurate weather forecasting, not hysterical political/ideological nonsense.
Interesting to know which signals the NOAA and the almanacs followed and which led them astray.
The temperature outlook shown above indicates above-average temperatures across the southern US, extending northward out West through the central Rockies and all the way up to Maine in the eastern part of the nation.
But – if you factor in above-average temperatures in the magma 200-500km below the surface, then all the snow and subzero surface temperatures aren’t so relevant and it’s still warmer than average and worse than we thought.
/sarc
Yeah. “Millions of degrees”
I live in Bastrop Texas outside of Austin had two snow storms in the past 4 weeks really cold. This past summer wasn’t that bad he wise that is seems to me like we’re going back to the more normal weather pattern
Last Wednesday, the traffic reports around Washington DC were loaded with street closings due to water main breaks. One street had two water main breaks. There had to have been at least a dozen, maybe more. DC isn’t prepared for snow, and when it gets more than about three inches, the Federal Government shuts down (or allows telework). I had no idea that it’s infrastructure was so ill-prepared it was for low temperatures, however.
GLERL had a prediction for the maximum ice cover of the great lakes to be 25% before winter started. It’s already at 30%, and they have since updated that prediction to 60% in the past few days. It’ll be interesting to see what the final maximum ends up being.
Noaa nailed the southwest right especially So Cal for above average temps and lower than average precipitation. I’m in the high desert on the border of Antelope and Victorville Apple valley . We haven’t had a drop of rain this winter and temps are running 10 degrees above normal . It’s litterly the year without winter !
You’re confusing Climate with weather. Climate is the overall picture of an area or the planet as a whole over an extended period of time. Weather is the day to day occurrences in a particular area.
While parts of North America are experiencing extreme cold, in the Southern Hemisphere they are experiencing extreme heat.
If you have taken the time to actually read the research on GLOBAL climate change, you would know that the expectation is for EXTREMES in WEATHER and weather related events, such as fires, floods, intensified storm activity.
But instead, the choice is to remain ignorant and to write nonsensical garbage like this which is fed to a group of people who are uneducated and easily led. That’s not conservative that’s evil! Conservatives means to act in ways that are cautious to work to sustain that which exists. A true conservative knows that ignorance is a liability which increases risk. A true conservative shuns risk.
Uneducated, Stacey? Really? That’s kind of presumptious of you.
i have 29 semester hours past my B.A. I think a lot of people here are quite well educated.
In case you missed the news story, it’s summer in the southern hemisphere. They should be having summer weather down there, although I’m doubtful that Patagonia is particularly balmy right now.
You’re a bit hoist on your petard there, Tootsie. Get over yourself.
“the expectation is for EXTREMES in WEATHER and weather related events”
OOPS….. FAILED AGAIN !!!!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/01/07/despite-what-youve-heard-global-warming-isnt-making-weather-more-extreme/
Your choice, Stacey, is to get an education or just rely on baseless propaganda designed for people like you who are uneducated and easily led.
And the so called extreme heat in the SH, is just NORMAL weather. Why is it that you don’t know the difference?????
“While parts of North America are experiencing extreme cold, in the Southern Hemisphere they are experiencing extreme heat. ” errr, no. Its actually pretty average and if anything less hot this summer. Where is this Southern Hemisphere heat you speak of? are you extrapolating one day in Sydney to a hemisphere? I see nothing on the scale of what the US is experiencing, but I have been having trouble with my omnipotence module lately and stand to be corrected.
Those sort of days are quite common in summer of the East Coast of NSW (where I happen to live)
What happens is that you get a persistent blocking of air movement over Central Australia, then for a couple of days that is released, and a frontal system funnels all that built-up heat over toward the East Coast.
So it gets RATHER WARM from the Central Slopes right across to the East Coast.
I remember similar days happen basically all my life. Its just NORMAL WEATHER.
Generally this heat is released by what is called a Southerly Buster, as the front moves up the coast.
Another one of those trollops that want their beliefs to be taken in the oddest ways.
A) stacey claims that we are confusing climate with weather.
B) stacey then claims that climate change causes “extreme weather”. i.e. “extreme cold in NH and “extreme hot” in SH.
Which is it stacey? weather or climate?
Not that any regulars or associates of WUWT have claimed the recent weather is “climate”.
That specious claim is your own personal false straw man stacey.
Consider that the topic of the article regards NOAA”s bad (normal for NOAA) 2017-2018 Winter prediction.
“How El Niño and La Niña affect the winter jet stream and U.S. climate”
What do you call a Winter prediction stacey? Is that weather or climate?
Let’s focus one your main claim Stacey.
stacey states that “fires, floods, intensified storm activity” are all caused by extreme weather.
One wonders just what definition stacey uses for “extreme”?
I strongly suspect it is the bogus Gore error-ridden propaganda film version of “extreme”.
When current weather is matched and exceeded by recorded history; recorded over the last 100+ years, current weather is simply normal weather, that is well within normal variance.
One also wonders just where there is actual science supporting stacey’s claim that “fires, floods, intensified storm activity” are caused by any kind of weather?
Recent fires are caused by man’s mismanagement.
• A) Man prevents fires, which causes dead wood fire burdens to build until catastrophic fires are likely..
• B) Man refuses to clear away trees, bushes and grasses known for explosive flammability when dry. Allowing fires to quickly spiral out of control and burn developments.
• C) A majority of fires are still caused directly by man.
Floods are quite normal.
Nor have floods increased in frequency or volume.
The same goes for droughts with global historical records recording far greater droughts centuries ago.
Intensified storm activity does not exist.
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/tornado/clim/EF3-EF5.png
All of which brings us to one obvious answer.
The ignorant one here is the one making specious claims without links or citations; i.e. stacey maxwell. What you’ve dumped here, stacey, are baseless claims without fact or merit, along with copious stacey opinion, blather and gross assumptions.
“Conservative” has a very broad vague definition.
Nowhere, in that definition implies a conservative shuns risk. e.g. Winston Churchill.
Conservatives do not like to rush actions or decisions when information is lacking. e.g. “climate change” which lacks veracity, evidence, proof, replication, verification. Especially when a country’s economy and standard of living is at stake.
Another term for that quality is called perspective. Conservatives try to attain a full perspective before making rash decisions.
Trollops with a attention spans rivaling canaries can be alarmists, but not conservatives.
Alarmists and MSM leap from one fear to another while shrilly screaming constantly.
Alarmists have cried “wolf” for thirty years now.
&bull Every claim beyond CO2 is a simple ghg is falsified.
&bull Every prediction is falsified.
&bull Every climate model is falsified.
&bull The Arctic is still filled with ice; as is the Antarctic.
&bull Storms are neither more frequent or intense.
&bull Rain still falls, well within normal rates and frequencies.
&bull Droughts are not more frequent.
&bull Animals are not dying; not even the polar bear.
&bull Glaciers are not retreating faster; especially since most glaciers were gone during earlier Holocene warming periods. Right now glaciers are retreating from natural warming since the LIA.
However, birds and bats are decimated out of the sky by wind and solar farms.
Your simple act of running in circles, scream and shouting about “extreme”, “conservative”, “risk”, “weather”, “fires”, “floods”, “intensified storms”, “climate” does reveal you are not a conservative.
Nothing but empty rhetoric for Jo to address. Lot’s of bluster from the BBC, not much fact.
And since climate ACTIVIST/alarmista, Rob, wants to bring up one day of warm WEATHER in Western Sydney, let’s look at the RAAF base data.
Note that NOT ONE of the record hot days are even THIS CENTURY !!!!
No warming in 79 years, despite massive urban growth and BOM’s highly irregular and ANTI-SCIENCE temperature methodology
Yes it was warm yesterday.. NOTHING UNUSUAL about that for a Sydney summer. !!
Looking like its back in the ice-box for America by the next weekend. Where there will be a classic U shape “ice age pattern” in the jet stream over eastern USA. The jet stream forecast suggests that the cold will become intense in the Great Lakes area over the next weekend and into Monday. l can see no real change in this patterning and its looking like lasting until at least the 18th.
The cold air will move out eastward in due course, although a big high-pressure system like that is slow to move.
One problem that remains after the really cold air is gone is the large extent of snow cover which will hamper the warmup.
Joe Bastardi is the best out there.
I remember i herard back in the late 70’s NASA PREDICTED a mini ice age not global warming. Go to Coast to Coast AM for a great scfi radio station by George Noory. Google his search you can find anything. Google Global Warming learn the truth how our govorment not Trump but the Communist Democrasts are trying to take over are the aliens already here.
Out here in not so sunny CA (today), Gov. Moonganja declared a return to CA’s permanent drought … due to “the driest December EVER (in the short term memory of Alzheimer’s patients) … so pay NO ATTENTION to the storms lined-up offshore due to hit tomorrow. Those storms perfectly ‘fit’ Jerry Brown’s climate models. They were OBVIOUSLY created by a sudden ACCELERATION of Global Temperatures … ohhhhhh mammmmaaaaa … your SINS against Gaia are gonna kill billions of humans!! Repent !!! and pay your tithes to faceless government bureaucracies … and you might be saved.
“so pay NO ATTENTION to the storms lined-up offshore due to hit tomorrow.”
I was getting ready to bring that up until I read a little farther. 🙂
Being wrong doesn’t phase some people, does it. Brown is so disconnected from reality. He’s not alone though, he has a lot of company, especially in California. These people live on a different planet.
“These people live on a different planet”
I wish!
Five weeks into Australian summer and we’ve had only ONE significantly hot day.
Maximum forecast temperatures for the capital cities today:
Sydney – a tepid 33C
Melbourne – unusually cool at 22C
Brisbane – normal at 32C
Perth – tepid at 34C
Adelaide – tepid at 27C
Hobart – cool at 25C
Canberra – normal at 33C
Darwin – normal at 30C
http://www.bom.gov.au/
Pretty lame, huh?
And yet, you want us to freak out about a BBC report on a dubious thermometer reading from one suburb in Sydney!
Read the URL if you can’t be bothered reading the article:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/sydney-weather-how-urbanisation-creates-hot-microclimates-in-our-suburbs-20170209-gu9b02.html
O yeah, beat this one: last year Jerry Brown declared a ‘permanent’ drought in California just months before dam busting record rains in Northern California. He calls it the ‘new normal ‘
Winter isnt over yet, 3rd week in March, youre having premature-evaluation
quote:
========
Therefore, for temperate areas in the northern hemisphere, spring begins on 1 March, summer on 1 June, autumn on 1 September, and winter on 1 December. For the southern hemisphere temperate zone, spring begins on 1 September, summer on 1 December, autumn on 1 March, and winter on 1 June.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Season
========
Are you from the U.S.?
Americans seem to have alternative notions about when the seasons start – notions that are alien to an Australian, for example.
The “meteorological” seasons occur with a time lag to the calendar/sun’s position.
This is because of the lag in time that it takes for the increasing or decreasing angle of the sun to reverse the warming/cooling the atmosphere and especially the oceans.
During early January, for instance when the sun is getting stronger in the Northern Hemisphere, the atmosphere and oceans are still losing more heat than gaining it.
The coldest/warmest average air temperature in the Northern Hemisphere comes almost 1 month AFTER the sun’s angle has reached the lowest/highest point in the sky.
Coldest months are Dec-Jan-Feb. Warmest are Jun-Jul-Aug.
Ocean temperatures take even longer to bottom/top out after the Winter/Summer solstice since water retains much more heat/takes longer to warm up/cool down.
The suns angle peaks around June 21st but the hurricane season often doesn’t really get going until 2 months later and the climatological peak for hurricanes is almost at the Autumnal equinox, 3 months later. That hurricane peak is September 10.
And an old saying is, “As the days grown longer the cold grows stronger”. Saying is for winter.
Just so you guys know, for my area the weather bunnies at Accuweather are predicting freezing rain (we used to call that sleet) tonight, and temps rising to upper 30s/low to mid-40s next week. Of course, they do change their minds with the direction of the blowing winds, too.
I am tracking everything they say now, including their forecasts, because I may have to get to the grocery store for popcorn and soda before the heat wave strikes. /sarc.
One unexpected benefit of the cold is the appearance of several ivory gulls in this county as well as (latest count) up to 100 sightings of snowy owls (real count: 23). The cold must be pretty bad if there’s nothing out for these birds to hunt for food, so they come this far south to find it. http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/lake-county-news-sun/news/ct-lns-arctic-bird-seen-here-st-0106-20180105-story.html
I’ve also had a white-throated sparrow at my feeding station, as well as a white-crowned sparrow. Not unusual birds, just unusual for this area, as they are generally found further east.
Sara January 7, 2018 at 4:17 pm
Just so you guys know, for my area the weather bunnies at Accuweather are predicting freezing rain (we used to call that sleet) tonight, and temps rising to upper 30s/low to mid-40s next week.
Freezing rain is rain that falls through a colder layer of air and freezes, sleet is snow that passes through a warmer layer of air and melts and then freezes into ice pellets as it enters colder air. They have different characteristics when they reach the ground as a result.
Here is the dictionary.com definition of freezing rain. .”rain that falls as a liquid but freezes into glaze upon contact with the ground.” The important distinction is the “glaze”. In other words it is very slippery. Driving in sleet may be OK if you are careful because it is granular, but freezing rain can create skating rink conditions in just a few minutes.
Sara:
Thank you for the birds update! I’ll keep a lookout, though we’re in Virginia, to see if they make it this far.
The Great Horned Owl that usually winters in my patch of woods left suddenly when the cold snap started. I haven’t heard it or the rest of the group since then. Great Horned Owls are rather noisy during the wee hours.
I wondered the other day if they migrated further south.
meanwhile to help answer your sleet question:
https://www.inverse.com/article/23243-sleet-freezing-rain-graupel-diamond-dust-precipitation-snow-definition
Enjoy!
As I said, Rob.. BBC report was just EMPTY rhetoric.. It didn’t actually say anything !!
But , as we all know… “BBC is renowned for propagandising with FAKE NEWS. !!”
That is what I said, and you have put forward nothing but mindless activist yapping.
Do you agree that Sydney was NO WARMER than in 1939, despite massive urbanisation?
One small area of Australia has a hot spot, and that is supposed to compare to the intense cold wave covering about 2/3rds of North America. …https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=140.69,-26.11,1107/loc=138.341,-28.007
and North America, …https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=-103.49,53.02,672/loc=-107.882,42.372
Plus the extensive cold wave in Asia. This winter the upper latitude cold spots in western Siberia are around 30 to 40 F warmer as compared to the last 2 winters. Then look at how far south the freeze line extended with this winter into China and other areas of Asia. I had expected to see Europe impacted, but surface winds had a strong easterly heading and those winds have protected Europe so far during this winter. That is also different as compared to recent years, …https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=-198.85,73.02,672
I don’t know, it’s all a bit confusing.
Here in Sydney we have Climate in the 1st 3/4 of the day when it gets hot (42C on Sunday) and in the late afternoon we have weather, when the “Southerly Buster” (from the Antarctic, I think) comes and cools us down.
So apparently conflicting Climate change and the weather ARE compatible, they just happen at different times during the day.
Rob:
See JoNova’s website on this topic.
Besides BOM being a laughingstock, even amongst activist government agencies, whenever Mass Media breathlessly trumpets some record claim, it is worth time and effort to do a quick check. Much of the world’s mass media place fear and alarm over accuracy.
Mix bad BOM data handling habits with Mass Media’s climate ambulance chasing is a recipe for information disasters.
Winter is not even half over yet(Dec-Jan-Feb) for that NWS forecast.
December featured temperatures of 3 degrees below average, only from the Great Lakes to the Northeast US. Temperatures were slightly warmer than average in the Southeast to the Plains States. Temperatures were 5 degrees above average for the Southwestern quarter of the country and a tad below average in the Northwest.
Use this link to get recent average temperatures for different periods in the US:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/tanal/temp_analyses.php
Almost all the bitter cold occurred during the last 10 days of December and this has continued into the 2nd week of January. A massive warm up will spread across the entire country and dominate the 2nd half of January but not be enough to offset the frigid first half.
Cold anomalies so far in January(and the last week of Dec) have been 10-20 degrees below average for the entire Eastern half of the US. However, warm anomalies later this month may be almost as extreme but probably not last as long, so January will still end up colder than average(judging by the start, you would think this is a no brainer but if we have a week of temps 20 degrees above average later this month the average will come up quite a bit)
February will be the month that could make or break the Winter forecast. The weak La Nina and early Winter high latitude ridging favors cold returning and Joe is the best at picking analog years. Seasonal forecasting is not my area of meteorological expertise so I’ll let Joe’s forecast ride.
Yeah, the winter weather goes in cycles: A cold arctic front comes through, followed by a warmup, and then another cold front comes through, followed by a warmup.
There are claims that this arctic cold front is unusual. It might be unusual in how cold it is, but it is not unusual for a front of this type to make an appearace in the U.S.
I don’t recall a winter when an arctic cold front did not enter the United States at some point during the winter. Sometimes they aren’t as cold as this one, and they may not affect as large an area, but they show up like clockwork.
Well you’ve got to give NOAA credit for getting the map and all the state boundaries right.
I don’t understand the excitement. The computer models predict “Climate Change”, the NOAA things predict weather. Weather is much harder to predict than climate. / sarc
I run a small weather consulting business that caters to South Florida agricultural operations. Every fall, I write up a winter outlook for my clients. Like NOAA, I have heavily weighted the ENSO pattern into my outlooks, but have noticed that the ENSO has been a poor predictor for North America the last 5 or 6 years. Other global patterns appeared to be dominating. This is what I told my clients in my winter outlook, sent in late October:
“We have high confidence that a La Nina has set in and will stay through the winter. This would tend to bring us another mild and uneventful winter in Florida (similar to what the National Weather Service is forecasting). However, we are expecting that the ENSO pattern will NOT be the dominating feature of this winter, but that the PDO, AO and other factors will dominate and override the La Nina pattern. Once again, we expect the PDO, QBO and AO to be more negative, resulting in more deep troughs over the Eastern US, with variable periods of warm and cold, and near average precipitation.”
So far, so good.
I have been around long enough to see the ENSO pattern have a pretty good track record with general winter patterns, but something appears to be changing. I am guessing it is the sun. Here is how I tried to explain it to my Orange Growers:
“Scientists have long debated whether changes in solar activity have a direct and predictable impact on near term surface weather conditions on Earth. Many mainstream scientists don’t recognize a correlation between the weather on Earth and the ‘weather’ on the sun. Others do entertain the idea that a prolonged period of low solar activity (few sun spots) could lead to cooler temperatures on Earth. US Weather Consultants falls in this ladder category.”
“The current solar sunspot cycle peaked in 2014 and is still coming below predicted values (red line). It is coming in weaker than any cycle in over 120 years; about half as strong as the previous cycle. Solar scientists are predicting that the next cycle, beginning around 2020, will be even weaker still, rivaling the Dalton Minimum of the early 1800’s, or even the more extreme Maunder Minimum of the 17th Century.”
“The extended periods of lower sunspot numbers are associated with extended cooler periods in the Eastern US and Europe. The number of sunspots has almost no impact on the total amount of solar energy streaming from the sun, put it does have a more significant impact on the amount of ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Less sunspots equal less ultraviolet radiation. The change in ultraviolet radiation has no immediately discernable impact on near surface weather, but it does influence the amount of ozone in the stratosphere, as UV breaks up ozone molecules. Ozone, in turn, warms the stratosphere. So, less UV from the sun means an increase in stratospheric ozone leading to warmer stratospheric temperatures.
Recall the graphic depicting the two phases of the Arctic Oscillation:
(I apologize for not having any idea how to insert that graphic into this post)
Note that a key ingredient in a negative Arctic Oscillation (on the right) is a ‘less cold stratosphere’. It is still speculative but reasonable to believe that a long period of reduced solar activity could lead to a warmer stratosphere, more conducive for the negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation. This in turn would tend to increase the risk of harsh winters over Eastern Europe and the Eastern United States, and likely lead to some global cooling.”
I am putting these thoughts out to the WUWT community for feedback. I apologize for the length of the post and the fact that I don’t know how to insert graphics. I honestly can’t say if I read this little hypothesis somewhere, or came up with it on my own. If it has some validity, I hope I came up with it. If it is utter nonsense, I hope I read it somewhere else!
My take is very low solar equates to overall lower sea surface temperatures due to less UV light as well as a more meridional atmospheric circulation.
In addition very low solar will cause a slight increase in albedo due to an increase in major volcanic activity, global cloud/snow coverage. Due to an increase in galactic cosmic rays associated with a very weak solar wind/ap index.
Excellent summary of the difficulty in predicting a complex, chaotic, multi variable system (the climate). NOAA and climate modelers that claim long term climate forecasts (using weighted computer models) are more accurate than short term forecasts such as the forecast for agricultural growers in Florida are either liars or fools.
It isn’t ‘difficult’ to predict a coupled, non-linear, chaotic system (IPCC description of the earth-ocean-atmosphere system), it is impossible. See Lorenz, 1972. It’s the nature of chaotic systems. While every system is deterministic (there are no truly random systems) the requirement for accurately determining the future state of a chaotic system is to know the exact initial value of every variable and every process affecting the system to a degree of precision that is not achievable by science, not to mention the fact that we do not know every variable and process affecting the earth-ocean-atmosphere system. In a chaotic system, being off by .01% in the initial value of a system can cause wildly different results i.e., if the butterfly in Brazil flaps it’s wings .01 sec slower, there may be a tornado in Alabama instead of Kansas, or there may be no tornado at all.
This is why the current crop of climate models are posed as boundary problems rather than initial value problems. What the climate models are in reality is not ‘predictive’ models, but ‘scenario checkers’ a fact that was once readily admitted by Climate scientists but has now been forgotten.