This blog has expired. My new blog The Next Grand Minimum will cover many of ths same subjects covered here, plus more analysis of the social and political impact of another grand minimum like the Dalton.
Professor Pulinets, from the Institute of Applied Geo- physics, Moscow, addressed the Schiller Institute conference in Rüsselsheim, Germany, on 2 July 2011 and he asked an interesting question, Are Earthquakes Foreseeable? and then examines The Current State of Research.
Professor Pulinets discusses ionization in the atmosphere as part of his earthquake research. One source of ionization is cosmic rays. He briefly examines the idea that cosmic rays impact the climate. Here is one of his graphics from his paper showing the relationship of rain fall to cosmic rays.
This is fascinating paper on the prediction of earth quakes. Highly recommend reading. It is available here.
Dennis Avery writes in the Canada Free Press about the coming climate change bomb shell, as the results of the CLOUD experiment at CERN is published. The speculation is growing that the CLOUD results verify Henrik Svensmark, Danish Space Research Institute, theory that natural cosmic rays create tiny “cloud seeds” that when mixed with atmospheric gases and are bombarded with ultra-violet light create cooling clouds.
Get ready for the next big bombshell in the man-made warming debate. The world’s most sophisticated particle study laboratory—CERN in Geneva—will soon announce that more cosmic rays do, indeed, create more clouds in earth’s atmosphere. More cosmic rays mean a cooler planet.
The full article is here, but Avery makes an important point in his article. It is the combination of the cosmic rays and the solar wind that can deflect or pass the cosmic rays. The stronger the solar wind, which are generated by a much more active sun, the more cosmic rays that are deflected and the fewer clouds generated to cool the earth. The opposit is true, the weaker the solar wind the more cosmic rays and thus more clouds.
Svensmark noted the gigantic “solar wind” that expands when the sun is active—and thus blocks many of the cosmic rays that would otherwise hit the earth’s atmosphere. When the sun weakens, the solar wind shrinks. Recently, the U.S. Solar Observatory reported a very long period of “quiet sun” and predicted 30 years of cooling.
I have written about the coming Grand Minimum at The Dalton Minimum Returns. Three experiments have now validated the cosmic ray cloud connection. We are in for some long term cooling.
When I started out in climate science in 2005, the climate people ignored the solar physics community. A casual perusal of the literature though indicated that the difference in climate outcome from Dikpati’s (NASA) estimate for Solar Cycle 24 amplitude of 190 and Clilverd’s (British Antarctic Survey) estimate of 42 amounted to 2.0°C for the mid-latitudes.
Since then, the prognostications of astute scientists with respect to Solar Cycle 24 amplitude have come to pass. Some commentators though are over-reaching and predicting a recurrence of the Maunder Minimum. We now have the tools to predict climate out to the mid-21st Century with a fair degree of confidence, and a repeat of the Maunder Minimum is unlikely. A de Vries Cycle repeat of the Dalton Minimum is what is in prospect up to the early 2030s and then a return to normal conditions of solar activity, and normal climate.
The three tools we have to predict climate on a multi-decadal basis are the solar cycle length – temperature relationship, the logarithmic heating effect of carbon dioxide and Ed Fix’s solar cycle prediction. Let’s start with the solar cycle length – temperature relationship, first proposed by Friis-Christensen and Lassen in 1991.
This chart compares the development of Solar Cycle 24 with the last de Vries cycle event – the Dalton Minimum. The Solar Cycle 24 ramp up in terms of sunspot number is tracking much the same as that of Solar Cycle 5 but about a year ahead of it. All solar activity indications are for a Dalton Minimum repeat. There has been no development that precludes that outcome.
Much fanfare was associated with the reappearance of sunspots earlier this year, marking the beginning of a new period of high solar activity. Now come a number of reports saying the Sun is most likely headed for a prolonged period of low activity, possibly rivaling the Maunder minimum. Three independent studies of the Sun's dynamics all predict that the next solar cycle will be significantly delayed and might even be skipped. The Maunder minimum is associated with a prolonged period of climate cooling known as the Little Ice Age. Whether Earth's climate is headed for a significant cooling trend has become a matter of heated debate, while at the same time NASA is warning that a quite Sun can also be a deadly Sun. In the 1850s, following a period of low sunspot activity, the largest coronal ejection event ever witnessed caused havoc with telegraphs and ship's compasses around the world. Such an ejection today could cause widespread power outages and failure of electronic equipment. Will our star turn both quiet and deadly?
One of the main impacts of the next Great Minimum, that some scientist are calling the Eddy Minimum, will be on agriculture. Astronomer John A. Eddy in 1976 wrote a landmark paper in Science entitled ‘The Maunder Minimum' in honor of Edward W. Maunder, an earlier astronomer who had examined the period during 1645-1715 when sunspots became extremely rare. It was also a period when the world experienced succesive crop failures.
WorldCrops.com has this to say about the Maunder Minimum and crop failures.
During one 30-year period within the Maunder Minimum astronomers observed only about 50 sunspots, as opposed to the thousands in modern times. The science is robust, and based on a systematic programme of observations conducted by the Observatoire de Paris. What is notable is that the Maunder Minimum coincided with the middle, and coldest part of, the so-called Little Ice Age, during which Europe and North America experienced bitterly cold winters.
During the Little Ice Age the northern hemisphere cooling was only “modest”, according to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, at less than 1° C. But what may have been only ‘modest’ cooling on a hemispherical basis still had dramatic effects. The Baltic Sea regularly froze in winters, such that people took sledge rides between Poland and Sweden, with seasonal inns established en route. In the winter of 1780, New York harbour froze, allowing people to walk from Manhattan to Staten Island. Successive harvest failures in France in the late 18th century were commonplace, and the resulting famines helped spark the French Revolution. North European males lost on average 2.5 inches in height by the early 1700s, the result of inadequate diets and associated diseases. And the knock-on effects of the cooler climate were manifold and self-reinforcing; Europe’s fishing fleets declined, as their main catch, cod, moved further south to warmer waters. It wasn’t all bad news, though. During the Little Ice Age, Spanish conquistadors returned from South America with a new staple foodstuff, suitable for the cool and damp climate of the Andes and which flourished in the new cooler and wetter climate in Europe – the potato.
One method for the tracking the impacts of the Eddy Minimum will be to track the changes in agricultural prices over the next decade at web sites like WorldCrops.com.
Some unusual solar readings, including fading sunspots and weakening magnetic activity near the poles, could be indications that our sun is preparing to be less active in the coming years.
The results of three separate studies seem to show that even as the current sunspot cycle swells toward the solar maximum, the sun could be heading into a more-dormant period, with activity during the next 11-year sunspot cycle greatly reduced or even eliminated.
In the past a less active sun has resulted in a cooler earth and during the Maunder Minimum, it brought on a mini-iceage. Here are some links to information on the Maunder Minimum on this blog: Maunder Minimum 1740—replay in 2020? (Updated)
Luboš Motl a physics Proffessor, Pilsen, Czech Republic has posted an interview with Ing. Ivanka Charvátová, CSc. from the Geophysical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences (Prague) on the reference frame. The story is of a politically incorrect scientific discovery that climate change here on earth maybe caused by the inertial motions of the sun. The interview is here. This is part that I found most interesting:
You are the author of quite a breakthrough in this field of study. What is it?
First I studied the SIM periodicity and in 1987 I came to survey the geometry of this motion. I discovered the solar motion can be classified into two elementary types. Motion along a trefoil-like trajectory governed by the Jupiter-Saturn order. And another motion type which is chaotic. This gave us a precise homogeneous basis, upon which it became possible to study the solar-terrestrial and climatic variability. You may find it comforting that no matter how the Sun wiggles, every 179 years it comes back to a regular trefoil path. It is important to note, that the periods of chaotic motion coincide with the long-term minima in solar activity such as the Wolf Minimum (1270-1350), Spörer Minimum (~1430-1520), Maunder Minimum (~1620-1710) or Dalton Minimum (~1790-1840). During the trefoil periods the ST-phenomena are stable – the sunspot cycles are 10 years long, volcanic activity is muted and in the middle of the trefoil period there is a temperature maximum down here on Earth.
Later I discovered also a 2402 year long cycle of solar motion. After the lapse of this period the Sun always enters a segment, when for almost 370 years it moves continuously along the trefoil trajectory. This is when the natural conditions are stable, there is a long-term thermal maximum. The latest symmetry of the motion trefoils was around 25 AD. The NASA scientists called this 2402 yr cycle as “Charvatova Cycle”. The prospective solar motion can be calculated in advance (celestial mechanics), which gave us brand new solar-predictive capabilities. So far our predictions exploit the observation that the same solar motion trajectory tends to generate similar phenomena. (I was the only one in the whole world who got the 23rd sunspot cycle prediction right). The physical mechanism is not known yet.
I find this idea more interesting than trying to blame human generated CO2 for climate change. I am sure there will be more to the story in the near future. Stay Tuned.
I have written many times about the religious belief in AGW and how it would blind political leaders and policy makers into preparing for global warming, when is was really global cooling that we should be worrying about. AB32, Globlal Warming Solutions Act of 2006, in California is a perfect example of what happens when religion trumps true science.
As a new solar minimum takes our planet towards global cooling an increasing number of scientists give credence to a new theory blaming our Sun's wobble.
It started in 2007 when scientists saw that gravitational forces in our solar system may have a huge impact on Earth's climate. Professor Ivanka Charvátová, CSc. from the Geophysical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, explains why there is suddenly so much interest in her theory in an exclusive interview with klimatskeptik.cz.
Professor Charvátová calls it Solar Inertial Motion (SIM) and she claims it will have serious impacts on our climate. She says a predictable "wobble" of our Sun called barycenter shift alters Earth's weather patterns. Few climatologists have yet studied this phenomenon. But the evidence supporting Professor Charvátová's SIM theory is becoming ever more compelling.
I have been following the Dalton Minimum (1790 to 1830) for several years and the possibility that we maybe returning to similar patterns over the next 20 years.
The infamous year of 1816 was beset with powerful changes in magnetism, major volcanic eruptions, and the wobbling of the Sun's position. It is believed that the coincidence of those powerful forces of nature propelled our planet into the widespread famine, drought, and destructive snows and rains that so many historians documented. Only recently have scientists thought to make the link with those correllated climatic events and solar "wobble" and come up with the SIM theory.
I suggest that you read the whole article here and come to your own conclusions.