What Do Repeating Solar Cycles Tell Us?

Russ Steele

In 2006 I wrote about the Return of the Dalton Minimum in this paper:  dalton_minimum

The main focus of the paper was on solar cycles that are about 200 +/- 10 year long. Below is a chart that compare the solar activity during the Maunder Minimum and Dalton Minimum and the current chain of cycles with a projection of future temperatures. We are continuing down the slope of cooling according to satellite temperatures shown HERE.

Source for the data is listed in the graphic. More in the Maunder Minimum in a future post.

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Russian Scientist Predicts The Next Grand Minimum

Robert Felix writes at Ice Age Now: Russian scientist predicts 100 years of cooling.

In a study of cyclic behavior of the Sun, Russian scientists now predict 100 years of cooling.

These are not just any scientists. This forecast comes from astrophysicist Dr Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the Russian segment of the International Space Station, and head of Space Research of the Sun Sector at the Pulkovo Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

ooo

The 200-year variations in sunspot activity and total solar irradiance (TSI) are the dominating reason for climate change, says Abdussamatov. “In whole, the solar cycles are a key to our understanding of different cyclic variations in the nature and society.”

You can read the entire paper HERE.  While Abdussamatov predicts the start of The Next Grand Minimum in 2014, Livingston and Penn have forecast that sun spots will disappear by 2015.

We have observed spectroscopic changes in temperature sensitive molecular lines, in the magnetic splitting of an Fe I line, and in the continuum brightness of over 1000 sunspot umbrae from 1990-2005. All three measurements show consistent trends in which the darkest parts of the sunspot umbra have become warmer (45K per year) and their magnetic field strengths have decreased (77 Gauss per year), independently of the normal 11-year sunspot cycle. A linear extrapolation of these trends suggests that few sunspots will be visible after 2015.

Livingston and Penn Paper is here: livingston-penn-2008

More evidence the sun controls our climate

Russ Steele

Horst-Joachim Lüdecke: The Sun, not Man, warms the Earth

Dr. Lüdecke reports his major discoveries in the latest issue of the journal Energy and Environment. His paper can be down loaded HERE.

Dr. Lüdecke’s paper is very complex and for those not schooled in statistical analysis it might be hard to follow. I have extracted part of a discussion of the paper at the Climate Realist blog.

The new analysis indicates that changes in the Sun’s output of radiation, which depends upon anomalies in its magnetic field that show up as sunspots, are what really drives temperature changes here on Earth.

Dr. Lüdecke said: “The Sun is still recovering from the Maunder Minimum, the 70-year period from 1645-1715 when there were hardly any sunspots. It was less active then than during any similar period over the past 11,400 years. It was then that the Hudson in New York and the Thames in London used to freeze over in the winter. 

“It is the unprecedentedly rapid recovery of the Sun’s activity over the past 300 years – far stronger than anyone had previously suspected – that has been the chief driver of global warming in recent decades. We have very little to do with it.” 

Dr. Lüdecke’s analysis of the 200-year record of monthly temperatures measured by thermometers at five northern-hemisphere stations shows the Earth cooled almost as much in the 19th century as it warmed in the 20th.  

Also, two 2000-year temperature reconstructions – one from a stalagmite, one from tree-rings – indicated that 100-year ups and downs in global temperature far stronger than those of the past 200 years were commonplace, strongly contradicting the “official” hypothesis that 20th-century global warming is unusual.  

Dr. Lüdecke said, “The Sun gives its name and its warmth to the Solar System. One should look there, not here, for the true cause of recent global warming.”

I was most interested in the 100 year climate cycles shown here and the proxy recored shown below.

The data is clear, the sun is a major influence on our climate.