The three studies released by NSO’s Solar Synoptic Network this week, predicting the virtual vanishing of sunspots for the next several decades and the possibility of a solar minimum similar to the Maunder Minimum, came as stunning news.  According to Frank Hill, “the fact that three completely different views of the Sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation.” The last time sunspots vanished from the sun for decades was during the Maunder Minimum from 1645 to 1700 AD was marked by drastic cooling of the climate and the maximum cold of the Little Ice Age.

What happened the last time sunspots disappeared?

Abundant physical evidence from the geologic past provides a record of former periods of global cooling. Geologic records provide clear evidence of past global cooling so we can use them to project global climate into the future - the past is the key to the future. So what can we learn from past sunspot history and climate change?

Galileo’ perfection of the telescope in 1609 allowed scientists to see sunspots for the first time. From 1610 A.D. to 1645 A.D., very few sunspots were seen, despite the fact that many scientists with telescopes were looking for them, and from 1645 to 1700 AD sunspots virtually disappeared from the sun (Fig. 1). During this interval of greatly reduced sunspot activity, known as the Maunder Minimum, global climates turned bitterly cold (the Little Ice Age), demonstrating a clear correspondence between sunspots and cool climate. After 1700 A.D., the number of observed sunspots increased sharply from nearly zero to more than 50 (Fig. 1) and the global climate warmed.

FIGURE 1. Sunspots during the Maunder Minimum (modified from Eddy, 1976).

The Maunder Minimum was not the beginning of The Little Ice Age - it actually began about 1300 AD - but it marked perhaps the bitterest part of the cooling. Temperatures dropped ~4 C (~7 F) in ~20 years in mid-to high latitudes. The colder climate that ensued for several centuries was devastating. The population of Europe had become dependent on cereal grains as their main food supply during the Medieval Warm Period and when the colder climate, early snows, violent storms, and recurrent flooding swept Europe, massive crop failures occurred. Winters in Europe were bitterly cold, and summers were rainy and too cool for growing cereal crops, resulting in widespread famine and disease. About a third of the population of Europe perished.

Glaciers all over the world advanced and pack ice extended southward in the North Atlantic. Glaciers in the Alps advanced and overran farms and buried entire villages. The Thames River and canals and rivers of the Netherlands frequently froze over during the winter. New York Harbor froze in the winter of 1780 and people could walk from Manhattan to Staten Island. Sea ice surrounding Iceland extended for miles in every direction, closing many harbors. The population of Iceland decreased by half and the Viking colonies in Greenland died out in the 1400s because they could no longer grow enough food there. In parts of China, warm weather crops that had been grown for centuries were abandoned. In North America, early European settlers experienced exceptionally severe winters.

So what can we learn from the Maunder?  Perhaps most important is that the Earth’s climate is related to sunspots.  The cause of this relationship is not understood, but it definitely exists.  The second thing is that cooling of the climate during sunspot minima imposes great suffering on humans - global cooling is much more damaging than global warming.

Global cooling during other sunspot minima

The global cooling that occurred during the Maunder Minimum was neither the first nor the only such event.  The Maunder was preceded by the Sporer Minimum (~1410–1540 A.D.) and the Wolf Minimum (~1290-1320 A.D.) and succeeded by the Daltong Minimum (1790-1830), the unnamed 1880 - 1915 minima, and the unnamed 1945-1977 Minima (Fig. 2). Each of these periods is characterized by low numbers of sunspots, cooler global climates, and changes in the rate of production of 14C and 10Be in the upper atmosphere. As shown in Fig. 2, each minimum was a time of global cooling, recorded in the advance of alpine glaciers. 

Figure 2.  Correspondence of cold periods and solar minima from 1500 to 2000 AD. Each of the five solar minima was a time of sharply reduced global temperatures (blue areas).

The same relationship between sunspots and temperature is also seen between sunspot numbers and temperatures in Greenland and Antarctica (Fig. 3). Each of the four minima in sunspot numbers seen in Fig. 3 also occurs in Fig. 2. All of them correspond to advances of alpine glaciers during each of the cool periods.

Figure 3. Correlation of sunspot numbers and temperatures in Greenland and Antarctica (modified from Usoskin et al., 2004).

Figure 4 shows the same pattern between solar variation and temperature.  Temperatures were cooler during each solar minima.

Figure 4. Solar irradiance and temperature from 1750 to 1990 AD. During this 250-year period, the two curves follow remarkably similar patterns (modified from Hoyt and Schatten, 1997). Each solar minima corresponds to climatic cooling.

What can we learn from this historic data?  Clearly, a strong correlation exists between solar variation and temperature. Although this correlation is too robust to be merely coincidental, exactly how solar variation are translated into climatic changes on Earth is not clear.  For many years, solar scientists considered variation in solar irradiance to be too small to cause significant climate changes. However, Svensmark (Svensmark and Calder, 2007; Svensmark and Friis-Christensen, 1997; Svensmark et al., 2007) has proposed a new concept of how the sun may impact Earth’s climate. Svensmark recognized the importance of cloud generation as a result of ionization in the atmosphere caused by cosmic rays. Clouds reflect incoming sunlight and tend to cool the Earth. The amount of cosmic radiation is greatly affected by the sun’s magnetic field, so during times of weak solar magnetic field, more cosmic radiation reaches the Earth. Thus, perhaps variation in the intensity of the solar magnetic field may play an important role in climate change.

Are we headed for another Little Ice Age?

In 1999, the year after the high temperatures of the 1998 El Nino, I became convinced that geologic data of recurring climatic cycles (ice core isotopes, glacial advances and retreats, and sun spot minima) showed conclusively that we were headed for several decades of global cooling and presented a paper to that effect (Fig. 5).  The evidence for this conclusion was presented in a series of papers from 2000 to 2011 (The data are available in several GSA papers, my website, a 2010 paper, and in a paper scheduled to be published in Sept 2011). The evidence consisted of temperature data from isotope analyses in the Greenland ice cores, the past history of the PDO, alpine glacial fluctuations, and the abrupt Pacific SST flips from cool to warm in 1977 and from warm to cool in 1999.  Projection of the PDO to 2040 forms an important part of this cooling prediction.

Figure 5.  Projected temperature changes to 2040 AD. Three possible scenarios are shown: (1) cooling similar to the 1945-1977 cooling, cooling similar to the 1880-1915 cooling, and cooling similar to the Dalton Minimum (1790-1820).  Cooling similar to the Maunder Minimum would be an extension of the Dalton curve off the graph. 

So far, my cooling prediction seems to be coming to pass, with no global warming above the 1998 temperatures and a gradually deepening cooling since then. However, until now, I have suggested that it was too early to tell which of these possible cooling scenarios were most likely. If we are indeed headed toward a disappearance of sunspots similar to the Maunder Minimum during the Little Ice Age then perhaps my most dire prediction may come to pass. As I have said many times over the past 10 years, time will tell whether my prediction is correct or not. The announcement that sun spots may disappear totally for several decades is very disturbing because it could mean that we are headed for another Little Ice Age during a time when world population is predicted to increase by 50% with sharply increasing demands for energy, food production, and other human needs. Hardest hit will be poor countries that already have low food production, but everyone would feel the effect of such cooling. The clock is ticking. Time will tell!

Larger images and references can be found in the PDF.

Update:

See John Coleman’s report on KUSI on the solar downturn here.

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.

The results of the new studies were announced today (June 14) at the annual meeting of the solar physics division of the American Astronomical Society, which is being held this week at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.

“The solar cycle may be going into a hiatus,” Frank Hill, associate director of the National Solar Observatory’s Solar Synoptic Network, said in a news briefing today (June 14).

The studies looked at a missing jet stream in the solar interior, fading sunspots on the sun’s visible surface, and changes in the corona and near the poles. [Photos: Sunspots on Earth’s Star]

“This is highly unusual and unexpected,” Hill said. “But the fact that three completely different views of the sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation.”

Spots on the sun

Sunspots are temporary patches on the surface of the sun that are caused by intense magnetic activity. These structures sometimes erupt into energetic solar storms that send streams of charged particles into space.

Since powerful charged particles from solar storms can occasionally wreak havoc on Earth’s magnetic field by knocking out power grids or disrupting satellites in orbit, a calmer solar cycle could have its advantages.

Astronomers study mysterious sunspots because their number and frequency act as indicators of the sun’s activity, which ebbs and flows in an 11-year cycle. Typically, a cycle takes roughly 5.5 years to move from a solar minimum, when there are few sunspots, to the solar maximum, during which sunspot activity is amplified.

Currently, the sun is in the midst of the period designated as Cycle 24 and is ramping up toward the cycle’s period of maximum activity. However, the recent findings indicate that the activity in the next 11-year solar cycle, Cycle 25, could be greatly reduced. In fact, some scientists are questioning whether this drop in activity could lead to a second Maunder Minimum, which was a 70-year period from 1645 to 1715 when the sun showed virtually no sunspots. [Video: Rivers of Fire Inflame Sunspots]

Hill is the lead author of one of the studies that used data from the Global Oscillation Network Group to look at characteristics of the solar interior. (The group includes six observing stations around the world.) The astronomers examined an east-west zonal wind flow inside the sun, called torsional oscillation. The latitude of this jet stream matches the new sunspot formation in each cycle, and models successfully predicted the late onset of the current Cycle 24.

“We expected to see the start of the zonal flow for Cycle 25 by now, but we see no sign of it,” Hill said. “The flow for Cycle 25 should have appeared in 2008 or 2009. This leads us to believe that the next cycle will be very much delayed, with a minimum longer than the one we just went through.”

Hill estimated that the start of Cycle 25 could be delayed to 2021 or 2022 and will be very weak, if it even happens at all.

The sun’s magnetic field

In the second study, researchers tracked a long-term weakening trend in the strength of sunspots, and predict that by the next solar cycle, magnetic fields erupting on the sun will be so weak that few, if any, sunspots will be formed.

With more than 13 years of sunspot data collected at the McMath-Pierce Telescope at Kitt Peak in Arizona, Matt Penn and William Livingston observed that the average magnetic field strength declined significantly during Cycle 23 and now into Cycle 24. Consequently, sunspot temperatures have risen, they observed.

If the trend continues, the sun’s magnetic field strength will drop below a certain threshold and sunspots will largely disappear; the field no longer will be strong enough to overcome such convective forces on the solar surface.

In a separate study, Richard Altrock, manager of the Air Force’s coronal research program at NSO’s facility in New Mexico, examined the sun’s corona and observed a slowdown of the magnetic activity’s usual “rush to the poles.”

“A key thing to understand is that those wonderful, delicate coronal features are actually powerful, robust magnetic structures rooted in the interior of the sun,” Altrock said. “Changes we see in the corona reflect changes deep inside the sun.”

Altrock sifted through 40 years of observations from NSO’s 16-inch (40 centimeters) coronagraphic telescope.

New solar activity typically emerges at a latitude of about 70 degrees at the start of the solar cycle, then moves toward the equator. The new magnetic field simultaneously pushes remnants of the past cycle as far as 85 degrees toward the poles. The current cycle, however, is showing some different behavior.

“Cycle 24 started out late and slow and may not be strong enough to create a rush to the poles, indicating we’ll see a very weak solar maximum in 2013, if at all,” Altrock said. “If the rush to the poles fails to complete, this creates a tremendous dilemma for the theorists, as it would mean that Cycle 23’s magnetic field will not completely disappear from the polar regions. … No one knows what the sun will do in that case.”

If the models prove accurate and the trends continue, the implications could be far-reaching.

“If we are right, this could be the last solar maximum we’ll see for a few decades,” Hill said. “That would affect everything from space exploration to Earth’s climate.”

Government leaders and policy makers should take notice of the findings of this important new analysis of the world food situation; for doing what climate alarmists claim is needed to fight global warming will surely consign earth’s human population to a world of woe, while doing next to nothing in terms of altering the current warm phase of the planet’s surface temperature.

A new study by the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change—Estimates of Global Food Production in the Year 2050: Will We Produce Enough to Adequately Feed the World?—reveals that a very real and devastating food crisis is looming on the horizon, and continuing advancements in agricultural technology and expertise will most likely not be able to bridge the gap between global food supply and global food demand just a few short years from now.

Crop yield and production data were utilized to identify the crops that supply 95% of the food needs of (1) the world, (2) six large regions into which the world may be divided, (3) twenty sub-regions, and (4) the world’s twenty-five most populated countries. Recent productivity trends of these key crops were then projected to the year 2050 for each of the specified geographical areas, revealing that expected advances in agricultural technology and expertise will increase the food production potential of many countries and regions. However, these advances will not increase production fast enough to meet the needs of the planet’s even faster-growing human population. But when the positive impact of Earth’s rising atmospheric CO2 concentration on crop yields was considered, the severity of the pending food shortage was found to be considerably lessened.

“Having evolved at much higher levels of atmospheric CO2 than those of the current geological period, many land plants grow substantially better with more CO2,” says Dr. William Happer, Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University, who states that the report “provides a very thorough review of the beneficial role of increased CO2 on mankind’s most important agricultural crops.”

In order to avoid the unpalatable consequences of unprecedented widespread hunger - and even starvation - in the years and decades ahead, the study’s author, Dr. Craig Idso, contends that “a commitment similar to that which drove the Apollo moon-mission is needed to increase crop yields per unit of land area, per amount of nutrients applied, and per amount of water used.” And about the only way of successfully doing so without the taking of unconscionable amounts of land and water from nature and thereby driving untold numbers of plant and animal species to extinction, is to “invest the time, effort and capital that is required to identify, and to then use, the major food crop genotypes that respond most strongly to atmospheric CO2 enrichment.”

However, rising CO2 concentrations are considered by many people to be the primary cause of what is claimed to be unprecedented global warming; and if regulations restricting anthropogenic CO2 emissions are enacted to fight this perceived but likely phantom problem, Idso contends that they will “greatly exacerbate” food shortfalls by reducing the CO2-induced yield enhancements that are needed to supplement the productivity increases provided by expected future advances in agricultural technology and expertise. And in the wake of such emissions regulations, hundreds of millions of people the world over will likely experience significant hunger and malnutrition.

Government leaders and policy makers should take notice of the findings of this important new analysis of the world food situation; for doing what climate alarmists claim is needed to fight global warming will surely consign earth’s human population to a world of woe, while doing next to nothing in terms of altering the current warm phase of the planet’s surface temperature.

The report can be viewed or downloaded at the website of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. Questions about the report can be addressed to Dr. Craig Idso at the email address contactus@co2science.org.

Readers may recall I wrote in this article about my family memorial day excursion to Crater Lake:

Crater Lake happens to have a USHCN weather station, and it is one of the few stations that GISS excludes (they have an exclusion code for it in their software Mosher located some time ago).

Steve Mosher commented in detail about that:
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Thanks for remembering that Anthony.

In addition to crater Lake there were 4 other northern California stations that GISS had removed from the data. In the paper Hansen merely says this:

The strong cooling that exists in the unlit station data in the northern California region is not found in either the periurban or urban stations either with or without any of the adjustments. Ocean temperature data for the same period, illustrated below, has strong warming along the entire West Coast of the United States. This suggests the possibility of a flaw in the unlit station data for that small region. After examination of all of the stations in this region, five of the USHCN station records were altered in the GISS analysis because of inhomogeneities with neighboring stations (data prior to 1927 for Lake Spaulding, data prior to 1929 for Orleans, data prior to 1911 for Electra Ph, data prior of 1906 for Willows 6W, and all data for Crater Lake NPS HQ were omitted), so these apparent data flaws would not be transmitted to adjusted periurban and urban stations. If these adjustments were not made, the 100-year temperature change in the United States would be reduced by 0.01C

Well, I wanted to see the analysis, the code, that was used to make this determination that these stations were flawed. Gavin basically said the paper documented everything, but these words don’t tell me HOW it was done. It just says THAT it was done. Any way that was pretty much why I wanted the code released. When it finally was released, you will see that there is no analysis supporting the removal of these stations. Upon inspection you can see some flakey stuff with the stations, but I was looking for math that quantified the flakiness. In the end, these were excluded by hand.

The argument of course is that including them or excluding them amounts to a tiny difference. That argument never held much water for me. The question, in my mind, was how many other flakey stations were there and was there math that could detect it? I think that’s a good question. It doesn’t make me doubt the record, I just think its a good question.

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I agree. I don’t know that Crater Lake data is flawed or “flakey”, it just may reflect the snow pack hanging around longer, creating a cool bias into summer. With the snow pack as heavy as it is this year, it will be interesting to see if that has an effect of suppressing mean temperature.

Concentration Camps To Re-educate Deniers Next?

It’s time to make public examples of those that disagree with reporter, and non-science-educated Richard Glover’s view of climate change. He would have skeptics “forcibly tattooed on their bodies.” Says the man, whom I’m willing to bet would not be able to explain a Lagrangian to save his life,

Not necessarily on the forehead; I’m a reasonable man. Just something along their arm or across their chest so their grandchildren could say, “Really? You were one of the ones who tried to stop the world doing something? And why exactly was that, granddad?”

Glover never says what form this cattle brand should take. Yellow and pink stars having already had their day, and the Mark of the Beast yet to come, I suggest a likeness of Alfred Wegener, a man who stood against the - strike that: the - consensus of his day, only to see his views vindicated in time.

Our would-be Australian comic Glover admits that “maybe the tattooing along the arm is a bit Nazi-creepy.” Only a “bit”, my dear?

As an alternative to imitating the Gestapo, he next suggests forcing his opponents “to buy property on low-lying islands”. He has the idea that this land “will become worthless with a few more centimetres of ocean rise”. As a duly elected officer of the Climate Skeptics Conspiracy, I accept this suggestion as binding, with just two provisos. The first is that our bids face no competition from other land speculators. Fair’s fair, after all.

To own a hunk of Hawaii - oceanfront Hawaii! A fraction of Fiji! Tracts of Tahitian Beaches! Imagine the views from the Virgins! White sands, palm trees, rum by the gallon! All at rock bottom prices, practically given away to those who refuse to heed the Chicken Littles of their day. You have yourself a deal, Glover, old man.

As long as you accept proviso two, designed to make the bet equitable. Writing in the June, 2011 New Criterion, Joseph Tartakovsky reviews the life of James Wilson, one of America’s founding fathers. Wilson, said, Tarakovsky

“mocks timidity about new legislation by recalling that the Locrians required a citizen who wished to propose a law to appear before the assembly with a cord around his neck and explain his reasons; if they were found wanting, he was promptly hanged.

We’ll buy the land, but you and your nervous brethren must immediately slip nooses around your necks so that if, say, in five years our beaches still exist, we can hang you from the nearest Bunya Bunya tree. I suggest1 that it would be unmanly - that is to say, womanly - of you to cavil with this bet.

Death Threats For Climate Scientists

Some Australian climate scientists have received death threats, over which Boing Boing inaptly calls “social media.”

These scientists are not enjoying threats because of their scientific activities, but because of their political activism. Seems a good many researchers are agitating for a new “carbon tax” to battle something called “carbon pollution.” It’s not clear what this is, but it must be euphemistic because of course carbon is the exact opposite of a pollutant.

But let’s not lose focus. Threats of death! Do meek men in lab coats who sport ill-considered facial hair and who sincerely believe they are “saving” their planet deserve to be told, “Shut up or die”? They do not.

I have investigated the matter and can say with certitude that the Climate Skeptic Conspiracy is not responsible for issuing intimidations via Twitter, Facebook, or any other media. We do not take in half-wits as members, and it is from this appalling group the threats originate.

I admit to jealousy: I have never received a death threat. That is to say, not since my days as a military man, where I heard with some regularity variants of the phrase, “Briggs, you ---. I’m gonna kill you!” And there was the incident where a sheriff, with whose son I had a tussle back in high school, drug me into his car and pointed his pistol at my nose and asked politely to distance myself from his spawn.

I suppose I should count the time, just last week, when a guy tried to muscle his car past me on 59th street, where I was crossing on foot. We exchanged words, but traffic forced him to drive on. Which he did, but only around the block, where he found me on 60th, and where we expressed views that most courts of law would interpret as threats of a mortal nature.

It is better said that I never received death threats for my political views. I am still hopeful.