7 New (2017) Papers Forecast Global Cooling, Another Little Ice Age Will Begin Soon

Kenneth Richards at No Tricks Zone

During 2017, 120 papers linking historical and modern climate change to variations in solar activity and its modulators (clouds, cosmic rays) have been published in scientific journals.

It has been increasingly established that low solar activity (fewer sunspots) and increased cloud cover (as modulated by cosmic rays) are highly associated with a cooling climate.

In recent years, the Earth has unfortunately left a period of very high solar activity, the Modern Grand Maximum. Periods of high solar activity correspond to multi-decadal- to centennial-scale warming.

Solar scientists are now increasingly forecasting a period of very low activity that will commence in the next few years (by around 2020 to 2025). This will lead to climate cooling, even Little Ice Age conditions.

Thirteen recently-published papers, seven new papers, forecasting global cooling are listed HERE: References to Dalton and Maunder Minimums.

 

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Cosmic Rays Modulate Cloud Cover

A new paper by Henrik Svensmark in Nature Communications.

The hypothesis in a nutshell

• Cosmic rays, high-energy particles raining down from exploded stars, knock electrons out of air molecules. This produces ions, that is, positive and negative molecules in the atmosphere.

• The ions help aerosols – clusters of mainly sulphuric acid and water molecules – to form and become stable against evaporation. This process is called nucleation. The small aerosols need to grow nearly a million times in mass in order to have an effect on clouds.

• The second role of ions is that they accelerate the growth of the small aerosols into cloud condensation nuclei – seeds on which liquid water droplets form to make clouds. The more ions the more aerosols become cloud condensation nuclei. It is this second property of ions which is the new result published in Nature Communications.

• Low clouds made with liquid water droplets cool the Earth’s surface.

• Variations in the Sun’s magnetic activity alter the influx of cosmic rays to the Earth.

• When the Sun is lazy, magnetically speaking, there are more cosmic rays and more low clouds, and the world is cooler.

• When the Sun is active fewer cosmic rays reach the Earth and, with fewer low clouds, the world warms up.

• The implications of the study suggests that the mechanism can have affected:

• The climate changes observed during the 20th century

• The coolings and warmings of around 2°C that have occurred repeatedly over the past 10,000 years, as the Sun’s activity and the cosmic ray influx have varied.

• The much larger variations of up to 10°C occurring as the Sun and Earth travel through the Galaxy visiting regions with varying numbers of exploding stars.

More details at WUWT.

Weak Solar Activity And La Nina Forebode Cooling Temperatures For The Months Ahead

By P Gosselin on 13. December 2017

The Sun in November 2017

By Frank Bosse and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt
(Translated and edited by P Gosselin)

In November the sun was unusually quiet with respect to activity. The observed sunspot number (SSN) was merely 5.7, which is only 14% of what is typically normal for month number 108 into the cycle. The current cycle number 24 began in December 2008. The sun was completely spotless 19 of 30 days in November.

At the end of the month some activity appeared, but only at a very low level. The following chart depicts the current cycle’s activity:

Figure 1: The monthly SSN values for the current solar cycle 24 (red) 108 months into the cycle, the curve for the mean of the previous 23 cycles (blue), and the similar solar cycle number 5 (black). Enlarged

The next chart shows a comparison of all observed solar cycles thus far:

Figure 2: The monthly accumulated anomalies of the cycles up to 108 months into the cycle. Cycle number 24 has taken third place for the most inactive. Enlarged

Icecap Note: The ability with today’s advanced technology to see the smallest spots or pores probably inflates the number of spots and diminishes the number of spotless days.

The situation thus remains unchanged: such a weak solar cycle has not been witnessed in 200 years. It is anticipated with quite high certainty that also the upcoming solar cycle number 25 will be about as weak, because the sun’s polar fields are about as strong as they were during the minimum between cycle number 23 and cycle number 24.

The very weak solar north pole so far has recovered significantly over the past few months since June. What this means now and for the future can be seen graphically at the chart posted here. You can find the latest information at http://www.solen.info/solar.

LaNina is here

An update to our last post here is surely of interest. We were sure of a La Nina by the end of December, and in the meantime, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology officially announced a La Nina in its most recent bulletin. The current model forecast shows continued falling sea surface temperatures along the equatorial eastern Pacific until about February, 2018:

Figure 3: The model for El Nino/La Nina in the Pacific, Source: NOAA. All forecasts point to a moderately strong La Nina event until spring. A powerful La Nina such as the one observed in 2011/12 is currently not projected by the models (which incidentally did not even forecast a La Nina just a few months ago). Enlarged

The impacts on global temperatures lag behind by about 3 to 4 months, and so we should expect a La Nina dip by spring.

Historically Quiet Sun Headed Towards Next Solar Minimum

by Meteorologist Paul Dorian, Vencore, Inc.

Overview

Solar cycle 24 has turned out to be historically weak with the lowest number of sunspots since cycle 14 peaked more than a century ago in 1906 and by some measures, it is the third weakest since regular observations began around 1755. This historically weak solar cycle continues a weakening trend in solar irradiance output since solar cycle 21 peaked around 1980 and the sun is fast-approaching the next solar minimum. The last solar minimum lasted from 2008 to 2009 and the sun was as quiet during that time as it has been since 1978. The sun is likely to enter the next solar minimum phase within three years or so. The sun has been spotless for 26% of the time in 2017 (90 days) and the blank look should increase in frequency over the next couple of years leading into the next solar minimum.

The importance of the sun

The sun is the main driver of all weather and climate on Earth and without it, life on Earth would not exist. The sun’s output energy is not constant, however, as it varies over the course of about 11 years which is the average time period of a solar cycle (a.k.a., sunspot cycle), typically taking about 5 1/2 years to move from the quieter period of solar minimum to the more turbulent solar maximum phase. Over the course of one solar cycle, the sun’s emitted energy varies on average by about 0.1 percent. That may not sound like a lot, but the sun emits a large amount of energy – 1,361 watts per square meter – and fluctuations of just a tenth of a percent can affect Earth.

The accumulated sunspot anomaly from the mean of the previous 23 cycles – 107 months into the cycle. Source

Third weakest solar cycle since 1755

Solar cycle 24 began in 2008 which puts us about nine years into the current cycle. An analysis of the current solar cycle (#24) finds it to be the third weakest since 1755 in terms of accumulated sunspot number anomalies from the mean value at this stage of the solar cycle. The mean value is noted at zero and solar cycle 24 is running 4048 spots less than the mean at the time of the study. In fact, the researchers claim that there have been only two weaker cycles since systematic observations began in 1755 – solar cycle 5 which began in April 1798 and solar cycle 6 which ended in May 1823 – both of these occurred during the extended period of low solar activity known as the “Dalton Minimum”. The seven cycles preceded by solar cycle 24 actually had more sunspots than the mean.

The rest of the Article is HERE. Dorian discusses the decline in solar irradiance over the last 40 years and new Space Station energy sensors.