September 5, 2019 by Robert at Ice Age Now
NASA dropped this bombshell announcement in a little-heralded news release coyly entitled “Solar Activity Forecast for Next Decade Favorable for Exploration.” In other words, NASA tried to make it sound like good news.
In the release, dated 12 June 2019, NASA described the upcoming decline in solar activity as a window of opportunity for space exploration instead of acknowledging the disastrous consequences such a decline could wreak on civilization.
Here are some direct quotes from the news release:
The Sun’s activity rises and falls in an 11-year cycle. The forecast for the next solar cycle says it will be the weakest of the last 200 years. (Emphasis added) The maximum of this next cycle – measured in terms of sunspot number, a standard measure of solar activity level – could be 30 to 50% lower than the most recent one. The results show that the next cycle will start in 2020 and reach its maximum in 2025.
Sunspots are regions on the Sun with magnetic fields thousands of times stronger than the Earth’s. Fewer of them at the point of maximum solar activity means fewer dangerous blasts of radiation.
The new research was led by Irina Kitiashvili, a researcher with the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute at NASA’s Ames Research Center, in California’s Silicon Valley. It combined observations from two NASA space missions – the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory and the Solar Dynamics Observatory – with data collected since 1976 from the ground-based National Solar Observatory.
In admitting that solar activity during sunspot-cycle 25 could be the weakest in 200 years, NASA was effectively forecasting a return to Dalton Minimum (1790-1830) conditions. But the release gives no mention of the ferocious cold, no mention of the disastrous crop losses, no mention of the ensuing starvation and famine, no mention of the wars over food, no mention of the powerful earthquakes, no mention of the catastrophic volcanic eruptions during the Dalton Minimum.
NASA Paper is HERE
Some people consider the low solar activity a trigger for other catastrophic events such as the 1811-1812 New Madrid Fault Earth Quakes and 1815 eruption of Mount Tamboura. As you can see from this chart global cooling produced some strong eruption.
I have done some investigation of the cooling triggering earthquakes and significant eruptions but could not find any smoking-gun evidence. [Your thoughts?]
The said the real issue is global cooling, as 1-2 degrees C of cooling shortens the growing seasons and disrupts the food supply. This is a problem for a planet with more mouths to feed with every passing year. Modern transportation can mitigate the distribution issues that plagued other grand minimum populations, but you first have to have agricultural output to distribute. This year the growing season is going to be much shorter than last year. Your thoughts?
The Next Grand Minimum 
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.press.
The sunspot cycle can be calculated: There are 3 cycles: an 11.49-year cycle. A 187-year cycle. These two mix together to create an 18139-year cycle, during which the solar neutral sheet flips 5 times. See http://www.MauriceCotterell.com The Cause of Global Warning and Global Cooling.
Interesting NASA doesn’t comment on the influx of cosmic rays with a decrease in solar magnetic field. From what I understand, that’s not good for aircraft flight crews and frequent flyers.
I collected average daily temperatures in my area to calculate Growth Degree Days per an earlier article on your site. As of September 1, the 2019 GDD is about 20% lower than 1 September 2018 along with the previous 5 years. Confirmed by a winery friend who complained his crop is not maturing this fall. He may only pick half his vineyard.
Chris, Interesting input. Some ground proof that the climate is changing. Thank for the comment. What region of the county was the half harvest vineyard?
El Dorado County in California.
Chris, fyi our Bureau of Meteorology here in Australia says it doesn’t collect sunspot data ‘because it is not relevant to climate’. Now if we could only link sunspots to CO2 they would have to take notice, wouldn’t they?
I’m of the opinion our climate is more complex than CO2 models. As CO2 levels rise, plants start going nuts hence why green houses artificially raise CO2 levels as Patrick Morse (sp? Former Greenpeace scientist) pointed out. Earth is self cleansing to a degree when it comes to so called organic air “pollutants.” So human attempts to”fight” (always makes me smile when some politico uses that word) climate change are a waste of money. I’m an environmental engineer by trade and know my most effective designs mimic natural processes versus “fight” them.
That all said, this week in Northern California has been wet and cold. There’s snow at the I-80 summit (Donner Pass). Hence, I’m doubling my efforts to prepare for a cold and snowy winter worse than last year.
Some of the winter forecasts I have seen for California were for warmer and dryer than normal weather. If valid, that could limit the snowfall. It is looking like a neutral Pacific, no El Niño or La Niña forecast. We will have to wait and see what Mother Nature brings for our enjoyment. Stay Tuned.
And no mention of weak radio wave propagation on the 17 meter and lower frequency bands.
Russ, re your comment about earth climate cooling triggering earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, may I suggest that there may be a correlation with (or maybe even causation) earth crustal ‘tides’ caused by varying gravitational forces betwen the earth, the sun and the heavier planets. Especially when these occasionally peak (and/or have a rapid rate of change) due to a tight ‘loop’ in the path of the earth’s movement around the sun over periods of a century or two. If changes in sunspot activity are partly due to similar gravitational forces, then our climate could be affected, as well as the incidence of quakes and volcanoes. I have seen a few posts on both of these topics at WUWT over the past couple of years.
Thanks for the comment. If you uncover any papers or articles linking solar activity and volcanic activity on earth, please post a link in the comments.