Via SpaceWeather.com You’ve heard of the 11-year sunspot cycle. But what about the Centennial Gleissberg Cycle? The Gleissberg Cycle is a slower 100-year modulation of sunspots. New research just published in the journal Space Weather suggests that the Gleissberg Cycle is waking up again, which could make solar cycles for the next 50 years increasingly intense.
You’ve probably heard of the 11-year sunspot cycle. The Gleissberg Cycle is a slower modulation, which suppresses sunspot numbers every 80 to 100 years. For the past ~15 years, the sun has been near a low point in this cycle, but this is about to change.
New research published in the journal Space Weather suggests that the Gleissberg Cycle is waking up again. If this is true, solar cycles for the next 50 years could become increasingly intense.
“We have been looking at protons in the South Atlantic Anomaly,” explains the paper’s lead author Kalvyn Adams, an astrophysics student at the University of Colorado. “These are particles from the sun that come unusually close to Earth because our planet’s magnetic shield is weak over the south Atlantic Ocean.”
Above: The South Atlantic Anomaly (blue) is a weak spot in Earth’s magnetic field where particles from the sun can come relatively close to Earth [more]
It turns out that protons in the South Atlantic Anomaly are a “canary in a coal mine” for the Gleissberg Cycle. When these protons decrease, it means the Gleissberg Cycle is about to surge. “That’s exactly what we found,” says Adams. “The protons are clearly decreasing in measurements we obtained from NOAA’s Polar Operational Environmental Satellites.”
Protons in the South Atlantic Anomaly are just the latest in a growing body of evidence suggesting that the “Gleissberg Minimum” has passed. Current sunspot counts are up; the sun’s ultraviolet output has increased; and the overall level of solar activity in Solar Cycle 25 has exceeded forecasts. It all adds up to an upswing in the 100-year cycle.
It also means that Joan Feyman was right. Before she passed away in 2020, the pioneering solar physicist was a leading researcher of the Gleissberg Cycle, and she firmly believed that the centennial oscillation was responsible for the remarkable weakness of Solar Cycle 24 (2012-2013). In a seminal paper published in 2014, she argued that the minimum of the Gleissberg Cycle fell almost squarely on top of Solar Cycle 24, making it the weakest cycle in 100 years. The tide was about to turn.
The resurgence of the Gleissberg Cycle makes a clear prediction for the future: Solar Cycles 26 through 28 should be progressively intense. Solar Cycle 26, peaking in ~2036, would be stronger than current Solar Cycle 25, and so on. The projected maximum of the Gleissberg Cycle is around 2055, aligning more or less with Solar Cycle 28. That cycle could be quite intense.
“With a major increase in launch rates, it’ll be important to plan for changes to the space environment that thousands of satellites and spacecraft are flying through from all sides,” says Adams. “Solar activity and particle fluxes could all be very different in the decades ahead.”
For more information, read Adams’s original research here.
Addendum: We were contacted by Prof. Valentina Zharkova and he wishes to add this addendum:
I wish to clarify some issues discussed in the post above https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/05/08/the-suns-little-known-100-year-gleissberg-cycle-is-waking-up/
discussing the Gleisberg cycle lasting for decades (?!) and its link to protons in the ENSO areas outlined in the paper by Adams et al 2025 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2024SW004238?campaign=woletoc referred in this blog.
First of all, any changes of the solar cycles are related to solar magnetic field was the solar dynamo theory teaches us while any accelerated particles produced during solar cycles are just a result of this variations of magnetic field of the Sun.
Hence, .Gleissberg cycle which is a centennial cycle always existed with a period 100-90 years. It causes Dalton minima in solar activity and, as results, in terrestrial temperature reduction. The previous Dalton minima can be seen in a number of papers (see Fig.2 and the references in the book chapter Zharkova 2021 https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/75534 ) The recent Dalton minimum was seen in cycle 24. By the way the Dalton minimum was also appeared after the Maunder minimum extending the cold patches then.
.
At second, I wish to emphasise that currently the solar activity entered in cycles 25-27 (2020-2053) the phase of the grand solar minimum (GSM) similar to that during Maunder minimum derived using tthe eigen vectors of the solar background magnetic field (see our papers Zharkova et al, 2015 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep15689 and Zharkova, 2020 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23328940.2020.1796243 ). This GSM started already on the Sun as the curve for spotless days in cycle 25 show https://www.sidc.be/SILSO/spotless taken from the Royal Observatory of Belgium site. There is a reduction of the numbers of active events in cycle 25 including flares and CMEs which have to be in its maximum right now in cycle 25 but not present. There is a reduction of the solar background and interplanetary magnetic fields.
This reduction of solar activity even at the maximum of cycle 25 is causing alreadya reduction of terrestrial temperature and the ENSO as discussed in our paper Zharkova and Vasilieva https://www.scirp.org/pdf/ns2024164_18303679.pdf to the IPCC prediction of global warming. The global warming will be postponed by 30 years until 2053 with this modern GSM and terrestrial cooling instead. The reduction of protons in the ENSO areas rclaimed by Adams et al, 2025 eflects a general reduction of enemy energetic particles occurring during any GSM.
This reduction of solar activity is caused by the solar dynamo wave interference which produce reduced or no visible activity of cycles 25-27 that will reduce the radiation and particles sent to the Earth and other planets. The reduction of terrestrial temperature by up to 1C will increase demands for energy resources and food product on the whole planet but specifically in the Northern hemisphere countries (see paper by Shindel et al, 2001, Science https://www.giss.nasa.gov/pubs/abs/sh02100q.html )
For more details how the new solar activity index with the summary curve of eager vectors is related to the current solar activity index defined by the averaged sunspot number,bers can be found in our MNRAS paper Zharkova et al, 2023 https://solargsm.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/zharkova_etal_mnras2023.pdf.
My recent interviews and talks including the EGU talk in May 2025 in Vienna about the modern GSM can be seen on my website https://solargsm.com and in tthe Tom Nelson podcast 278 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SawIG4TNpHQ.
For more details on the recent papers see my webpage https://solargsm.com/publications.
Valentina Zkarklova
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Did all that smoke coming out of Vatican City have anything to do with this?
Nah, Gleissberg sounds Jewish, or German.
Where were all the Extinction Rebellion activists protesting the Vatican’s climate change pollution?
Peaking about 2036 – – Two Questions
1. will I be here? {likely not}
2. what exciting things might I witness if a manage to stick around?
I predict that future generations will take antique predictions with a grain of salt and that there will be no one that made the antique predictions around to complain about that.
What does this mean? milder weather, wilder weather, more rain, less rain, colder, hotter?
Yes, and human co2 emissions will be blamed.
My model predicts slight cooling. Sometime after 2038 it will start warming again because of the ~940-year cycle.
My core sunspot-based model is a 99-year moving average. Interesting isn’t it?
To understand the Sun’s cycles you need to first let go of the idea that the Schwabe cycle has an 11-year period.
I appreciate and respect that you did research and made a model. What your r-value?
There were two periods when your model seriously went the wrong direction wrt temperatures when it shouldn’t have, in the 1980-1990s and again just before 2025.
There is little confidence your model is better than my model which involves the 109-year average SN and the 30-year average SST, which correlate at r=.95 with an 11-year lag.
It may be that your model is still useful but not very accurate sometimes.
I have a couple of versions of my model. This one, shown with HadCRUT5 temperature instead of SST, has improved accuracy but can’t predict as far into the future.
As for 1980s-90s, ocean heat-transport mechanisms have a say in Earth’s dynamic response, and the response time appears to vary based on state. A shift from cooling to warming is likely a big deal. Major volcanoes also have a say: El Chichón in 1982, and Pinatubo in 1991.
The fading 2024 spike is most likely explained by the injection of water vapor into the stratosphere by the 2022 underwater eruption of Hunga Tonga. Based on my models, we should return to the cooling trend that started in 2016. Time will tell.
Why is your model 109 years long? If you’re including SST, then you’re simply accounting for Earth’s fast response to solar activity, which I don’t try to model. I don’t do weather.
“The fading 2024 spike is most likely explained by the injection of water vapor into the stratosphere by the 2022 underwater eruption of Hunga Tonga. Based on my models, we should return to the cooling trend that started in 2016.”
If you knew the sun-climate connection you wouldn’t assign the warming to HT.
There was no cooling trend since 2016. It is warmer now than in 2016. It will cool some after this cycle maximum period (SN>95), but that usually happens.
“If you’re including SST, then you’re simply accounting for Earth’s fast response to solar activity, which I don’t try to model. I don’t do weather.”
1) The sun warms the ocean first, then 2) the ocean warms the atmosphere. 3) If you don’t model sun-ocean forcing first, you’ve missed the real action.
“Why is your model 109 years long?”
Because that’s what the math works out to be, when using the 30-year SST, which is ‘climate’, not weather. I can also do some weather effects. It is actually 109 years plus an 11 year lag, for 120 years, or about 11 solar cycles.
The 2023/24 ENSO was predicted by me in my 2022 Sun-Climate Symposium poster, where I predicted an El Niño based on SN>95, and I said SC#25 activity would boost temps above the 1.5°C “limit” – and both happened.
My model is 9 solar cycles long with a 13-year delay which adds to 22, but I wouldn’t use numerology to explain why it works. If you had focused more on the Sun and less on SST you might actually understand what’s going on. One of these days I’ll tell you why your model almost works.
Earth has two distinct response profiles to solar forcing: a long-term integral response associated with ocean heat capacity, and fast, dynamical and chaotic responses having to due with SST, air circulation, etc.
SST is affected by the sun; ENSO and other weather-related climate cycles may be partially synchronized to the faster solar cycles shown in the bottom plot. For example, temperature is coherent with solar activity for cycles with periods of 6.5, 3.6 and 2.5 years.
Most of the solar energy affecting climate is associated with the longer solar cycles. An integrator has a 20dB/decade amplitude response. So does a moving average.
I’ve read two papers which say that there is an imminent grand solar minimum, bottoming out in about 2035.
The approaching new grand solar minimum and Little Ice Age climate conditions; Morner; Natural Science; Volume 7, Number 11 (2015)
Modern grand solar minimum will lead to terrestrial cooling; Zharkova; Temperature; Volume 7, Number 3 (2020)
Another grand solar minimum is not happening any time soon.
Usoskin etal (2014) in “Evidence for distinct modes of solar activity” defined two modes in the v1 SN, centered on 20 and 67 SN (~33 and 92 v2 SN), defining grand minima and maxima criteria.
Usoskin etal (2016) in “Solar activity during the Holocene: the Hallstatt cycle and its consequence for grand minima and maxima” further defined those levels into 30-year averages of 20 SN and 55 SN (v1 SN), respectively for grand minima and maxima.
The present day 30-year v2 SN average is 67.6 SN, more than twice the grand minima criteria.
Even if the v2 sunspot number remained at zero for the next ten years, the 30-year average v2 SN still wouldn’t reach the 30-year grand minima criteria of 33 v2 SN by 2035.
Accordingly, Zharkova’s grand minima by 2035 has already been mathematically eliminated.
I wonder if they have factored in the Gleissberg cycle ramping up.
Yes, i was wondering what Zharkova would make of this article..
I had the exact same thought come to mind … what about this upcoming grand solar minimum that was all the rage on this website a few years ago? That would decrease the temperature? Poof … gone.
Now this article about how the sun will be more intense and will increase the temperature. ????
Both can’t be true. Perhaps neither is true.
Correlations between solar cycles and ENSO have been established, although a lot of that has to do with timing El Niño-La Niña events. I’m curious what more intense solar maxima means for El Niño, which has a huge impact where I live (Colorado).
Future ENSO activity will most likely be subject to solar influence similarly to the recent past.
The 1980s to early 2000s had more regularly positive MEI, I think due to the three powerful solar cycles #21-23 in a row with short solar minima periods for #21 & #22.
The longer SC#23 slide into the minima and the weak SC#24 have contributed to more La Niña conditions, consequential for increasing cloudlessness, lower albedo, and higher ASR.
We could be in for another El Niño by the time the SC#25 solar maxima period is over, as this was an intense cycle TSI-wise, even though it was more often below average sunspots-wise.
In that lower plot, (13 month smoothed….) it looks like there are TWO signals with different periods lined up. A primary, (stronger), and a secondary, (weaker), but shorter cycle length.
In the 1958(ish) peak, the secondary is well down and to the right of the primary signal, actually below the red line, (approximately under the 5 in the 156.6 text.
In the 1970’s peak, the secondary peak is on the right, on the 95 red line.
In the 1980 peak, the secondary is approaching the primary, but still on the RHS.
Similar for the 1990’s but a little closer but still on the RHS.
In 2002, the weaker secondary, signal is now on the LHS.
In 2013, the weker secondary is sliding further to the earlier dates, relative to the primary.
For the present, the secondary is now another step earlier, being just above the question mark, the primary signal is still to peak.
In summary, the primary has a period of around 11 years, (as we are taught in school), the secondary, (weaker), has a period of 10 years.
You would expect these TWO signals to add together about every 100 years and be subtractive/opposed 50 years after that summation/peak.
Anyway. That’s what I see. Anyone else see similar? And of course, does this pattern exist before the dates shown in the chart above?
Keep in mind the MEI baseline is adjusted every 5 years based on overall ocean temperatures. This is questionable. What this does all by itself is increase La Nina values and decrease El Nino values. I suspect that adjustment is completely responsible for the trend you found.
“I suspect that adjustment is completely responsible for the trend you found.”
Probably not Richard, as the MEI v2 only came out a few years ago, looks like 2018. If you wish to see v2 as the adjustment to v1, that would make sense to me.
You should consider the trend as real. There is an inverse relationship between MEI and central Pacific outgoing longwave radiation (CP OLR) that holds up with MEI v2.
Ja. I told you so it is going to get hotter as well. From 2037. It seems certain planets have an effect on the centre of the sun.
Not exactly. On the barycenter, certainly, which is the center of orbit for the solar system.
So what is the state of the Science these days?
The NASA website said clearly “The Sun is the primary forcing of Earth’s climate system” but then that page was retired in the great man-made carbon dioxide emissions panic.
Is the Sun being quietly rehabilitated because nobody wants to admit they were wrong about carbon dioxide emissions causing climate change?
Only the Sun can heat the ocean and the oceans control the climate.
Earth to scale at the top of the page should make it clear enough who dominates the system.
Re: “Only the Sun can heat the ocean and the oceans control the climate.”
Are we certain about that?
There are probably hundreds of active under sea volcanoes that have never been charted. And, probably thousands of uncharted under sea thermal vents.
For instance, for at least the last two years, there has been an almost constant flow of super heated sea water (+3C to +5C) from the north east Pacific coast of Japan, across the north Pacific, to the Vancouver Island and Washington state coast line, where it collides with cold water, and disappears.
I scan almost every posted article at WUWT, and no one has even mentioned this huge temperature anomaly, for at least two years.
Oregon state university has a view on it
https://volcano.oregonstate.edu/submarine
You are correct, that has not been a topic of discussion here. This is the first I have heard of this particular matter. I would like to hear more.
Contact Cliff Mass at his blog https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/?m=1
From Google
While Earth’s internal energy does contribute to the balance, it’s not significant enough to modulate climate. I’d put this idea in the Geocentric category, which is far better than being Homocentric.
The UK government has just allocated £800 million to find ways to block the Sun.
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/05/08/sun-dimming-quango-has-800-million-of-taxpayer-money-to-blow-and-a-ceo-on-450k/
We have to find a way to stop foolish people who want to block the sun.
Let me make a prediction: This is never going to happen. The uk just threw away a lot of money.
I was fortunate to have met Joan Feynman and Alex Ruzmaikin from JPL in 2018 and 2020, and had several conversations with them at those Sun-Climate Symposiums.
As their paper said, the sun reached the Gleissberg minimum again in SC#24 due to it’s weakness.
We should also be aware that the last such minimum lasted longer than just one solar cycle. We can’t know for sure right now that the next cycle SC#26 won’t be smaller than the current cycle, like cycles #12-14, or whether it will continue to ramp up from SC#25.
The authors are simply repeating the results Zharkova et al, 2023 https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=124007 showing the key periods derived from sunspots without citing them.
Fig.1 from the paper shows the wavelet spectral analysis of the sunspot numbers. The Dalton minimum in fact was in cycle 24.
The authors of the paper cited in this post, Feynman/Ruzmaikin, published their paper in 2014, so how did they repeat what Zharkova did in the future in 2023, and why/how should they have cited a paper that wasn’t written yet?
Alex Ruzmaikin gave a presentation in 2018 (which can be looked up at the LASP server) which included a wavelet spectral analysis of sunspot numbers. I saw it with my own eyes in person.
Why shouldn’t we say Zharkova didn’t just repeat Feynman/Ruzmaikin?
I respected that she wrote papers, but Zharkova is really out there on a limb. When we will hear her concede that we aren’t going to be in a GSM in 2035?
It shouldn’t be called the Gleissberg cycle, as Gleissberg never described it, and he was wrong in pointing to a 7-solar-cycles periodicity (∼80 years). Joan Feynman was the first to describe this cycle properly, so I call it the Feynman Cycle. She was a great solar physicist and, incidentally, Richard Feynman’s sister.
Solar activity is going up, not down. It has always been reflected in the solar spectral data but ignored by most. This is the basis of the solar model prediction I made in 2016.
I had big arguments with Leif Svalgaard about this, because he disputed the existence of secular solar cycles and the increase in solar activity over the past 300 years.
The best way to see the increase in solar activity over time is to count the number of sunspots for each entire 11-year cycle and express it as anomaly over the average.
Right, and the Solar Modern Maximum was first determined by me in 2018 in both my Sun-Climate Symposium and AGU posters, to be from 1935-2004, for 70 years. I have a DOI fyi.
So it should be named after me, the Weber Maximum.
Don’t be ridiculous. The Modern Solar Maximum was first identified in the literature by Paul Damon in 1997. Since then, there have been quite a few papers about it. For example:
Mursula, K., et al., 2017. Seasonal solar wind speeds for the last 100 years: Unique coronal hole structures during the peak and demise of the Grand Modern Maximum. Geophysical Research Letters, 44 (1), pp.30-36.
But you can call it the Weber Maximum if it makes you happy.
I am not being ridiculous, and I will be happy to call it after myself, because I am the one who first discovered, calculated, and published the 1935-2004 period. It happened right here at WUWT first, circa 2014/15 – I can prove it.
Paul Damon in 1997 did not have the benefit of using yet-to-be-developed v2 SN and he was seven years before the end of the real ‘Modern Maximum’.
Mursula did not specifically define or publish this or any other time period.
The next maxima will again be called a ‘Modern Maximum’, as it will be ‘modern’ then, so the last one needs a name, as it won’t be ‘modern’ anymore when the next such maxima happens. Before my definition, there were several other published versions with different dates. Those different periods should be named after those who defined them.
It is the Weber Maximum. You even replicated my findings.
If you’re right and your C4 turns out to be true, future scientists should call the next maxima the Vinos Maximum. Happy now?
In science, one doesn’t name what one discovers after himself. It is the others that do. Good luck at that.
It should similar to naming the model runs for Nino34 for example, or climate models, where each model run is named after it’s originator.
Who should I name the 1935-2004 Mod Max after if not it’s originator? Why haven’t you named it after me?
The real issue here is who wanted to take credit for my discovery?
Who wrote articles and books and stymied every effort to recognize me?
This is where we find out some people around here are unaccountable, who just can’t give proper credit where it is due.
There is nothing wrong with me asserting the truth, even if it is hated.
“The Modern Solar Maximum was first identified in the literature by Paul Damon in 1997.”
You are mistaken, that paper was from 1994, ten years before the end of the actual calculated Modern Maximum from 1935-2004.
They are lukewarmers who give the sun a backseat to Hansen’s CO2 forcing.
“SummaryPaleoclimatic studies of the Medieval Solar Maximum (c. A.D. 1100–1250, corresponding with the span of the Medieval Warm Epoch) may prove useful because it provides a better analog to the present solar forcing than the intervening era. The Medieval Solar Activity Maximum caused the cosmogenic isotope production minimum during the 12th and 13th Centuries A.D. reflected by 14C and10Be records stored in natural archives. These records suggest solar activity has returned to Medieval Solar Maximum highs after a prolonged period of reduced solar activity. Climate forcing by increased solar activity may explain some of this century’s temperature rise without assuming unacceptably high climate sensitivity. By analogy with the Medieval Solar Activity Maximum, the contemporary solar activity maximum may be projected to last for 150 years. The maximum temperature increase forced by increased solar activity stays well below the predicted doubled atmospheric CO2 greenhouse forcing.” – my emphasis
In their text they refer to 2050 as their predicted maximum end date. To them we are still in it even after the true actual calculated maximum has passed.
They also include the two Gleissberg minima within their maximum timeframe.
I am saying they are wrong about the time period in spite of their precedent.
Their maximum is not the maximum,1935-2004 was the actual maximum.
It’s my right to call my factually correct maximum by name to differentiate between all other declarations I have previously heard of, including theirs.
They are simply trying to force-fit a 150-year solar maximum period to match their Medieval Maximum 150-year length so they can reinforce their harmonics theory of solar activity. Their AD 1100-1250 is actually 151 years.
I had cordial arguments at WUWT with Leif Svalgaard over the increase in solar activity before you ever showed up, then I stopped arguing when I had clearly proven my case. Then you came along several years later and made the same or similar arguments thinking you were unique or something.
You have predicted in C4 basically a second consecutive modern maximum. Based on Svalgaard’s sunspot history, it’s a possibility that can’t be ruled out, even if it was arrived at by guesswork.
On the other hand, what is the reason a grand maxima should be expected over a grand minima in C4, versus another near-repeat of a C1 or a C2?
Read my book “Climate of the Past, Present and Future” and you’ll find out. Solar activity is cyclical on all timescales.
“Read my book…Solar activity is cyclical on all timescales.”
Why do I need to read your book when I can see for myself, without your help, that solar activity is highly variable?
“Cyclical” is too strong a word, needing modifiers. “Cyclical” implies things that aren’t present in the data, like it will return to similar values repetitively.
Furthermore if your C4 is based on a number of different sub-cycles as I suspect, then some kind of uncertainty analysis needs to be done to show the range of activity levels wrt the uncertainties inherent in each claimed sub-cycle [ie Bray, etc], not just a single curve as you show, but a curve with error bars for SN amplitude and cycle phase timing.
Whatever are you guys talking about? I wrote this piece in 2019
Revisiting the 87-year Gleissberg solar cycle | Bread on the water
and I mentioned William Arnold who had this all figured out in 1985.
He even mentioned the planets’ movement and I was able to verify the correlation that he had noted. He was only out by 5 years or so. After 1995 Tmax (global) started going down. I predict that in 2037 or 2038 Tmax will start to go up again. That means it will get warmer…..The current cooling period of the GB cycle never really materialized due to increased volcanic activity, especially in the oceans.
“Whatever are you guys talking about?”
Not William Arnold, nor planets. I am talking about the inherent errors of ‘cyclical’ thinking. He is ignoring it – ie, not talking about it.
“After 1995 Tmax (global) started going down. I predict that in 2037 or 2038 Tmax will start to go up again. That means it will get warmer…..”
Apparently you didn’t notice, but global Tmax was not in your article, and temperatures have only been increasing since 1995, getting warmer. What’s the significance if T continues to go up after 2037/38?
“The current cooling period of the GB cycle never really materialized due to increased volcanic activity, especially in the oceans.”
This is a speculation, not a known fact. It is known however that albedo and TSI conspired together to cause ocean warming.
@Bob
Please read carefully. I measured that Tmax (global) is going down from 1995. The only explanation for the delta warming of the oceans (plus more CO2 outgassing) must lie in the fact that volcanic activity has been increasing.
@Javier
I am working on a new post, most probably I will publish this sometime this weekend. I would love to hear your comments on it!!
Sorry Bob.
See Table 1 here:
An Inconvenient Truth | Bread on the water
Tmax wasn’t labelled but I saw it in your table, the NH warmed more.
What did Eddy tell?
Gleissberg discoverd the cycle or at unversity of Istanbul or university of Ankara as Professor of Astronomy.
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/search/filter_database_fq_database=OR&filter_database_fq_database=database%3A%22astronomy%22&filter_database_fq_database=database%3A%22physics%22&format=SHORT&fq=%7B!type%3Daqp%20v%3D%24fq_database%7D&fq_database=(database%3A%22astronomy%22%20OR%20database%3A%22physics%22)&p_=0&q=author%3A(%22Glei%C3%9Fberg%22)&sort=score%20desc%2C%20bibcode%20desc&unprocessed_parameter=adsobj_query&unprocessed_parameter=qform
Seven solar cycles is correct for the interval between the starts of the Dalton and Gleissberg (late 1800’s) minimums, but there were twelve solar cycles from Gleissberg to the current centennial minimum. So the Gleissberg centennial cycle has varied between roughly 80 and 130 years. The mode is around 110.5 years, and the long term astronomical mean is 107.91 years.
Ulric, Javier, Andy. Bob.
An evaluation of the greenhouse effect by carbon dioxide (2) | Bread on the water
Please give me a fair comment on my thoughts? It will be much appreciated.
Makes one wonder if those pushing technologies to block sunlight knew about all of this and are trying to get it in place to prevent warming due to solar cycles.
Data patterns i see reliably well. Personal behavior patterns, I generally swing and miss, so this is just a passing thought.
STORY TIP
The BBC claim a third of carbon dioxide emissions are manmade – then edit that bit out:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/09/bbc-quietly-edits-question-time-net-zero/
Debate on climate policy taken out of programme over statistic ‘mistake’ by broadcaster’s fact-checking unit
Two comments:
“My estimate of the lag time is of the order of 40 years.”
Solar activity usually imparts enough additional absorbed solar radiation (via albedo help) that leads to decadal ocean warming. The ocean responds within a year of a solar cycle increase over 95SN.
On 30-year climate scales, there is an 11-year lag from 109-year SN average, not 40 years.
Bob Weber,
‘Solar activity usually imparts enough additional absorbed solar radiation (via albedo help) that leads to decadal ocean warming’
I fully agree that the oceans respond to the decadal solar cycles. This response is clearly shown in both ENSO data and tropical cyclone energy data.
However, this does not mean that all of the response is limited to the short term. If you take a long term moving average of ENSO (I prefer a 14 year EWMA, that is stripped of short term variability), you will see that there is a reflection of the 100 – 110 year Gleissberg cycle in the ENSO data. As I said in my previous comment, this reflection is offset by several decades. Thus, while the peak in the most recent Gleissberg cycle occurred around the 1970s, the peak in the reflective ENSO cycle is just being passed now.
There is very little lag between the solar wind strength and the inverse response of the AMO. Stronger solar wind states in the mid 1970’s , mid 1980’s, and early 1990’s, forced colder AMO anomalies via positive North Atlantic Oscillation regimes, and weaker wind states since 1995 with negative NAO conditions forced a warmer AMO within about half a solar cycle.
https://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-amo/from:1955
Correlations of global sea surface temperatures with the solar wind speed:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682616300360
solar plasma temperature and pressure:
Yes there are many response mechanisms in the earth’s atmosphere and troposphere to solar activity and at many different time frames.
However, it is well recognized that the strongest determinant of global atmospheric temperatures is ENSO. And as I said in my above comments, the Gleissberg cycle is reflected in ENSO, but with a significant time lag.
The AMO envelope dominates multidecadal global temperature change, and every other warm AMO phase is during each centennial solar minimum, with no significant lag.
El Nino conditions do typically increase during the centennial lows in solar. El Nino episodes during a warm AMO phase normally produce 8 month lagged warm pulses to the AMO via a negative influence on the North Atlantic Oscillation. E.g. Aug 1998, Aug 2005, Aug 2010, Aug 2016:
https://psl.noaa.gov/data/correlation/amon.us.data
110 years is very close, it’s the first grand synodic period of Earth-Venus synodic periods versus Jupiter-Uranus synodic periods. That cycle produces the quasi centennial lows in solar activity. It suffers a phase catastrophe by the end of each cycle, in the way that the solar cycles are ordered. A longer cycle of all four bodies varies the lengths of the centennial minima, producing a series of grand solar minima every 863 years.
How many other little-known solar cycles should we know about?
Miles Mathis here https://milesmathis.com/updates.html His says has proved his theory of sun spots using position of planets. He says that Feyman is wrong in the article “The Gleissberg Minimum” 5/7/2025 (US notation should be 7th May). Look up his earlier papers. Not saying that Miles Mathis is right about his charge field or anything else but his sunspot predictions were accurate. The 11 year cycle relate to the orbit of Jupiter (the largest planet) so it makes sense about a longer cycle of all the planet alignment. This can be predicted. What that means about Earthquakes, Volcanos, plate movement, magnetic fields, cloud coverage, ocean temperatures, ocean currents etc is questions no one has answered. It certainly has nothing to with the influence of CO2 on temperatures (which in engineering knowledge of thermodynamics, heat&mass transfer, fluid dynamics geology and physical chemistry is zero)
Interesting, but I don’t agree with his prediction of solar cycle 26 being a monster, as it is the same type as SC 16 (max 1927) and SC 20 (max 1969), where Jupiter and Uranus were in heliocentric inferior conjunction near cycle maximum. Though lower sunspot numbers does not have to mean the solar wind would also be weaker, as SC 20 shows, it had the strongest solar wind states of the space age in its declining phase.
The Centennial Cycle of solar activity is a product of the first grand synodic period of Venus-Earth-Jupiter-Uranus, at close to 110 years. A longer synodic cycle of all four bodies varies the lengths of the centennial minima, producing a series of grand solar minima every 863 years.
The current centennial minimum maps out to be impacting only two sunspot cycles, cycles 24 and 25, and has been the mildest centennial minimum for over 1000 years. The next two centennial minima from around 2095 and 2200, will be the longest back to back pair of grand solar minima for 3450 years.
The actual timing of each solar cycle maximum between the centennial minima, is when Earth-Venus inferior conjunctions are in better alignment with Uranus. That accounts for their shorter length, typically at 10.4 years long. At maximum, Jupiter will be in one of four positions, near to inferior or superior conjunction or either quadrature. This pattern breaks down later through the centennial cycle, as Earth and Venus have a longer period with Jupiter as it moves faster than Uranus. Earth, Venus and Jupiter then ‘hook into’ Neptune at cycle maximum as a surrogate for Uranus, with the same type of alignments, until EaVeJu can collectively resume alignments with Uranus again. This results in much longer sunspot cycles leading into and out of the centennial minima, but the very shortest cycles are in the middle of the longer grand solar minima, because EaVeJu return faster to Neptune as it moves slower.
The best way to study this is with heliocentric astronomy software, like TheSky or Alcyone, animating at 291.96096 day intervals following Earth-Venus syzygies, starting say 17th July 1617. Further explanation and a list of solar cycles in this article:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YOu7hHVEuaWWLuztj6ThEsJd7Z-765Uz-L68lQbRdbQ/edit?tab=t.0
.