Yesterday, WUWT carried the headline: Coldest Spring In England Since 1891. This essay offers what could be an explanation for it. Judge for yourself. – Anthony
Guest essay by David Archibald
Back in 2006, I published my first paper in climate science. That paper, Solar Cycles 24 and 25 and Predicted Climate Response, predicted a temperature decline of 1.5°C over Solar Cycle 24. The model has become a little more refined since then, and further updated by the papers of Jan-Erik Solheim, Ole Humlum and Kjell Stordahl. Given that Solar Cycle 23 was three years longer than Solar Cycle 22, the average temperature of Armagh in Northern Ireland and the CET is modelled to be 1.4°C colder over Solar Cycle 24 than it was over Solar Cycle 23. The model is based on the theory of Friis-Christensen and Lassen in their 1991 paper.
We are now four and a half years into Solar Cycle 24. So how is the prediction holding up? That is shown in Figure 1 following:
Figure 1: CET Average Temperatures 1990 – 2025
Over Solar Cycle 23 the average temperature of the CET was 10.4°C so the model predicts that the average over Solar Cycle 24 will be 9.0°C. For the first four years of Solar Cycle 24, it has averaged 9.8°C. For the prediction to hold from here, the average temperature over the remainder of the cycle will have to be 8.7°C. The average temperature of 2010 was 8.8°C – only 0.1°C more than what is needed from here. With solar maximum of Solar Cycle 24 now past us, the prediction is in the bag.
Thanks to Richard Altrock’s green corona emissions diagram we can also predict average temperature over Solar Cycle 25. Interpreting that diagram, Solar Cycle 24 will be at least 16 years long. In turn, that means that the CET over Solar Cycle 25 will be a further 1.4°C cooler than the average over Solar Cycle 24. The following graph shows what that looks like:
Figure 2: CET Average Temperatures 1960 – 2037
The CET record is now 354 years long. Has something like that happened before? Yes it has. Figure 3 following shows the CET record from 1659 and puts our Solar Cycle 24 and 25 predictions in that context:
Figure 3: CET Average Temperature 1659 – 2037
Some individual years have had averages colder than our Solar Cycle 25 prediction. The eleven years centred on 1695 had an average temperature of 8.1°C. This cold period killed off 30% of the population of Finland. The cold period centered on 1740 affected Ireland badly, killing several hundred thousand people – 20% of the then population. The better known potato famine was one hundred years later. There was a major volcanic eruption in 1739, Tarumai in Japan, that would have contributed to the cooling over 1740. Volcanic effects last only a couple of years though. There seems to have been a regime change with temperatures after 1740 about 1.0°C colder than the years before it. This suggests a solar origin. In fact the high temperatures up to 1740 look similar to the high temperatures of the late 20th century.
Perhaps a solar regime change is in train once again. Livingstone and Penn forecast a maximum amplitude for Solar Cycle 25 of 7 which would make it the smallest solar cycle for over 300 years. Figure 4 shows what that will look like:
Figure 4: Solar Cycles 1749 – 2040
Despite what is happening to their climate, the UK is persisting with a project to convert their largest coal-fired power station, Drax in North Yorkshire, to burning woodchips to be imported from the United States. This is an attempt to placate the gods of climate at a capital cost for the conversion of £700 million ($1,070 million). This is laughable and very tragic at the same time. The whole circus will end in tears.