Melting ice will cause blasts of cold air to be funnelled over Britain during winter months
Britain will be hit by longer and colder winters in coming years because of global warming, scientists have said. Melting Arctic Sea ice has changed wind patterns in the northern hemisphere - bringing blasts of colder air across the UK.
Scientists believe the changes could be why we have been experiencing such a bitterly cold December.
Arctic conditions: A bus tries to make its way through Tunbridge Wells, Kent, as bad weather sweeps across the country
In future we are three times as likely to be hit by bitterly cold winter months because of the changing climate. Vladimir Petoukhov, who conducted the study at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact in Germany, said the disappearing sea ice will have an unpredictable impact on the climate.
‘This is not what one would expect. Whoever thinks that the shrinking of some far away sea-ice won’t bother him could be wrong,’ he said.
There are complex interconnections in the climate system, and in the Barents-Kara Sea we have discovered a powerful feedback mechanism. ‘Our results imply that several recent severe winters do not conflict with the global warming picture but rather supplement it.’
Colder winters: Warming of the polar ice cap could give us regular freezing Decembers in the future
Rising temperatures in the Arctic - increasing at two to three times the global average - have peeled back the region’s floating ice cover by 20 percent over the last three decades. As the Arctic ice cap has melted the heat from the relatively-warm seawater escapes into the colder atmosphere above, creating an area of high pressure.
That creates clockwise winds that sweep south over the UK and northern Europe. The study was completed last year - before Britain was hit by a freezing winter and heavy snowfall.
Chilly: A car drives carefully in a blizzard in North Tyneside, as the current cold spell continues to grip the country.
Scientists say we are three times as likely to have cold winters in the future
Scientists said it was too early to say if the freezing conditions this year and last year were caused by changes in the Arctic. But as the ice continues to melt, Britain will begin to have warmer than average winters - but not for another half a century.
Stefan Rahmstorf, professor of physics of the ocean at the Potsdam Institute, said: ‘If you look ahead 40 or 50 years, these cold winters will be getting warmer because, even though you are getting an inflow of cold polar air, that air mass is getting warmer because of the greenhouse effect. ‘So it’s a transient phenomenon. In the long run, global warming wins out.’
The paper was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research last month (shows you how corrupt the AGU which publishes the JGR has become).
Hadley Climate Centre 2003: “89% Less Snow for Scotland” Posted on December 29, 2010 by hauntingthelibrary
Don’t you just love that: “89%”? Gives it that touch of pseudo-scientific accuracy and certainty.
This one comes from The Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, which is part of the UK Met Office, and is dated 2003. The Hadley Centre had produced a report for the British-Irish council which found that
“average snowfall could decrease by up to 89%”
This gave Dr Richard Dixon, Head of Policy for WWF Scotland an opportunity to speculate that:
“It even begins to answer the question of whether life itself will be tenable in the Scottish Islands in 100 years time.”
Quite why the absence of snow and a rise in temperature of between 1.8 and 2.2 degrees would make Scotland’s highlands and islands less habitable rather than more is not quite clear. Perhaps he was concerned that the “highlands” might be flooded.
----------
James Hansen 2008: Warm Winters “Clear Sign” of Global Warming. Hauntingthelibrary
I won’t waste any time or space on a lead-up to this one, it speaks for itself:
Hansen’s visit to London last week was partly inspired by the decision to approve construction of a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent.
This, Hansen wants to warn us, is a recipe for global warming disaster. The recent warm winters that Britain has experienced are a clear sign that the climate is changing, he says. See post here.
And the recent excruciatingly cold winters? No doubt they’re also a sign of global warming.
---------
IPCC 2007 forecast failing in every way By Robert Scheaffer via Marc Morano
The UN’s “Nobel Prize Winning” IPCC Report in 2007, predicted “warmer northern winters” for Europe. As summarized in this UN Press Release of April, 2007, we should expect to see “the ongoing thawing of European glaciers and permafrost, the delayed winter freeze of rivers and lakes, the lengthening of growing seasons, the earlier spring arrival of migratory birds… In addition to warmer winters, Europe’s northern regions will experience more precipitation and run-off. The expansion of forests and agricultural productivity will be accompanied by greater flooding, coastal erosion, loss of species and melting of glaciers and permafrost.” UNEP report link.
A classic case of a “failed prediction.” Theories making predictions that fail are called “refuted.”
---------
Meteorologist in 2007 - reduced arctic ice will mean warmer, delayed winters. In 2010, reduced arctic ice will mean colder winters.
Meteorologist Jeff Masters Can’t Keep his Scientific Rubbish Straight! Masters in 2007: ‘If you say it’s going to be warmer than normal, you’re almost always right these days’— Making it up as he goes along! ‘In 2007, Masters blamed the late, warm winter on a lack of polar ice. Now he blames the cold, early, snowy, winter on a lack of polar ice’
Masters 2007: ‘The fact that so much of the polar ice cap melted this summer. That’s going to slow down the arrival of winter...When you don’t have a full set of polar ice covering polar waters, it’s harder for big air domes to form and bring us our arctic outbreaks’
---------
Warm Winters Result From Greenhouse Effect, Columbia Scientists Find, Using NASA Model (1999) Northern Climes, Buffeted By Stronger Winds, 7 To 10F Hotter
A team of scientists from Columbia University has shown that warm winters in the northern hemisphere likely can be explained by the action of upper-atmosphere winds that are closely linked to global warming.
Global mean surface temperatures have increased in the range of 0.6 to 1.2F since the late 19th century. But far more severe warming has taken place over wide regions of northern Eurasia, Canada and Alaska, with temperatures averaging 7 to 10F warmer in the last 35 years, according to data previously compiled by the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City.
The research, which appears in the June 3, 1999 issue of the British journal Nature, offers no predictions on what temperatures future winters will bring, but suggests a continuation of the current trend for three to four more decades.
If warming trends continue, said Drew Shindell, associate research scientist at Columbia’s Center for Climate Systems Research and lead author of the report, northern regions of Europe and Asia and, to a lesser extent, North America, can expect winters that are both warmer and wetter, with increased rain and snow.
“Based on this research, it’s quite likely that the warmer winters over the continents are indeed a result of the increasing amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” Dr. Shindell said. “This research offers both a plausible physical mechanism for how this takes place, and reproduces the observed trends both qualitatively and even quantitatively.”
Other authors of the Nature paper were Gavin A. Schmidt, associate research scientist at Columbia’s Center for Climate Systems Research; Ron L. Miller, associate research scientist in the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics at Columbia, and Lionel Pandolfo, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of British Columbia. Drs. Shindell, Schmidt and Miller also maintain an affiliation with the NASA Goddard Institute.
The physical mechanism the authors suggest is a redistribution of heat closely related to recent changes in atmospheric wind patterns, an indirect consequence of greenhouse warming. Greenhouse gases trap heat at the Earth’s surface, while cooling the stratosphere, a region of the atmosphere that extends from about seven to about 30 miles above the planet’s surface. This cooling has increased the speed of the stratospheric jet stream and has strengthened a lower atmosphere vortex of west-to-east, counterclockwise winds that naturally forms over the polar region each winter.
During the winter, the ocean retains heat better than the land. So when the dominant west-to-east winds increase, they carry warmer air from the oceans to the continents, and colder continental air to the oceans. In North America, the Rockies intercept the warmer winds, so the effect is stronger west of the mountains and is mitigated in central and eastern portions.
The Columbia team used several versions of the NASA Goddard Institute’s general circulation model, a computer construct that predicts the Earth’s climate when certain inputs are varied. Model simulations suggest that much of the increase in surface winds and in continental surface temperatures during the winter months is induced by the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In the model, increasing greenhouse gas emissions lead to a warmer surface and, at the same time, a colder stratosphere. The large wintertime continental temperature increases produced in the model correspond quite well with what scientists actually observe. But when the researchers used a version of the climate model that did not adequately represent the stratosphere, the results did not jibe as well with reality.
Colder polar temperatures in winter, and warmer temperatures in the middle latitudes, are actually part of a natural cycle of climate variability, which made the warming trend more difficult for the scientists to isolate. The temperature differences are reflected in sea-level pressure, which decreases in the Arctic region and increases at the middle latitudes; this cycle is called the Arctic Oscillation and is second only to El Niño in its effects on global weather. In the NASA Goddard Institute simulations, increasing greenhouse gases caused a preference for one phase of this cycle over another, with stronger west-to-east surface winds at the Northern Hemisphere middle latitudes, leading to the increased surface temperatures over land.
“Despite appearing as part of a natural climate oscillation, the large increases in wintertime surface temperatures over the continents may therefore be attributable in large part to human activities,” Dr. Shindell said. “The impact of greenhouse gases on climate through surface wind changes may be as large as, or in some areas larger than, the more direct impact of global warming.”
The research was supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Now alarmists claim that cold winters are caused by the greenhouse effect. The mark of a truly dishonest religion. See Steve’s post here. H/T Marc Morano.
Recent Coloradoan Soapbox articles by Dave Swartz (Nov. 27) and J.K. Peterson’s (Dec. 13) discuss their beliefs that human-induced climate change is a serious problem that must be confronted.
I doubt that Swartz and Peterson have the detailed technical background to make reliable judgments in how human-induced carbon dioxide increases will affect climate. I view Swartz and Peterson as representative of a large group of intelligent and concerned citizens who have been (or allowed themselves to be) brainwashed by what they have heard over and over again for the last 20 years from an uncritical mainstream media.
The mainstream media have not well served the public on this topic. They have yet to dig deep and ask the tough questions.
As guardians of openness and the truth, the mainstream media have let the public down by not presenting the other side of the warming issue. They have primarily echoed the continuous self-serving carbon dioxide climate degradation statements emanating from our country’s scientific, environmental, and political elites.
These statements mostly have been unsupported climate speculations, exaggerations and untruths.
Warming groups have a vested interest in the carbon dioxide warming threat. Scientists can garner federal grants. Environmentalists can use global warming to exert greater pressure on corporations.
Politicians can use the warming scare to increase their control over our lives, elevate the role of the government and increase their power. A broad ranging “group think” or “herd mentality” has developed.
If I had not spent 57 years (last 49 at Colorado State University) studying, forecasting and teaching meteorology-climate and only knew about climate from what I’ve read/heard in the mainstream media and in government pronouncements, I likely would have had similar warming concerns as Swartz and Peterson and millions of other Americans whose climate knowledge has been shaped by mainstream media.
But the knowledge I have accumulated during a long career does not permit me to accept these carbon dioxide induced warming pronouncements as being realistic.
I know of other more plausible nature processes which give more credible explanations of the global climate changes which have occurred during the last 150 years.
Thousands of our country’s older and more experienced meteorologists have similar opinions as mine. There has yet to be a broad, open and honest scientific debate of the likely influence on climate by rising levels of carbon dioxide by our country’s most knowledgeable specialists.
I am not saying that a doubling carbon dioxide, by the end of the 21st century will have an influence on our global climate, however. Doubling carbon dioxide should cause an increase in the globe’s hydrologic cycle (precipitation) of 3 percent to 4 percent.
But we should experience little global warming. Certainly not the 2 to 5 degrees Celsius warming projected by the global models whose handling of the globe’s hydrologic cycle is greatly flawed and causes them to simulate grossly unrealistic high warming numbers.
The climate changes induced by carbon dioxide are likely to be more beneficial than detrimental for humankind at least for the next 50 to 100 years.
William M. Gray is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Atmospheric Science at CSU
ICECAP NOTE: Dwight Eisenhower in his 1961 Farewell Address to the Nation warned:
“that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present - and is gravely to be regarded.”
This applies to the IPCC, NOAA, NASA, the universities and the once great National Center for Atmospheric Research in beautiful Boulder, CO. As Bill has written, the media has enabled this corruption of the science to take place by building public support for green programs and providing cover for the governments (federal, state and even local) to press forward with programs that they use to pay for their social agendas. These green agendas have devastated the economies of Europe and unless our congress shows backbone, the US will follow suit.
California as usual is leading the states in spiraling the drain and with 12.4% unemployment, people and corporations are leaving the state so rapidly, they are affecting the wind patterns. See much more in Dr. Singer’s story here.
“The last few days of the year look to be very cold throughout Sweden, according to a forecast by the Swedish meteorological agency SMHI. This means that several parts of Sweden, including the southern region Gotaland and eastern Svealand, will have experienced the coldest December in at least 110 years.”
Read the complete article here.
Not what the models projected
This reality of course flies in the face of what climate models predicted earlier. The SMHI (Sweden’s Met Office and devout warmist organisation) keeps archives, and so I thought surely there must be something there that had earlier forecast warmer winters for Sweden. I didn’t have to look very long to find it.
First there’s this report dated 16 September 2010 here: New climate projections indicate more extreme weather. Here are just a couple of excerpts (Warning - you might first want to tie your butt to yourself to keep from laughing it off!):
“New climate projections for severe weather situations in 100 years also show that truly cold days will virtually disappear.”
And:
“The new scenarios show the effects of global warming with more details than before, thanks to more computer power and high geographical resolution.”
And:
“As a whole, the new ensembles are an important foundation for continued climate research. However, they can already be applied to many areas,” says Grigory Nikulin.”
Does he mean like governments preparing for winters? And finally:
“Truly cold weather, such as -10C in Spain or -30C in southern Sweden, is unlikely to occur in future.”
The report analyzed the climate change signal for Sweden in scenarios for the 21st century in a large number of coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs), used in the AR4 by the IPCC.
At the SMHI Rossby Centre, regional climate models were run under different emission scenarios and driven by a few AOGCMs. They used the results of the runs as a basis in climate change in Sweden. What did they find? (Crap, of course, but read it for yourself):
Projected responses depend on season and geographical region. Largest signals are seen in winter and in northern Sweden, where the mean simulated temperature increase among the AOGCMs (and across the emissions scenarios B1, A1B and A2) is nearly 6C by the end of the century, and precipitation increases by around 25%. In southern Sweden, corresponding values are around +4C and +11%.
Okay, it’s still a long way to the end of the 21st century. But as Sweden’s 2010 December-of-the-century shows, the models and calculations seem to have forgotten a few important details. Back to the drawing board!
Global Warming & Constipation By Andre Bernier, Weather Jazz
The New York Times must think their readers are ignoramuses. Blaming the recent record cold and record snowfall along the east coast on.... (ah, hem).... global warming!
A friend of mine in Chicago sent me the link (tongue-in-cheek) to which I replied: “Yes, and next the NYTimes will tell us that constipation is caused by global warming.” Don’t laugh. “Serious” studies have concluded that global warming is the cause of things like depression, the Minneapolis bridge collapse, slug infestations and the best wine that Scotland has ever produced! You can see the entire list by clicking here.In the meantime, watch this British physicist who correctly predicted the extreme cold and snow in the UK this winter and was originally laughed at by the “mainstream” UK meteorologists last autumn.
In a nearly unanimous vote, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) just approved a statewide cap-and-trade scheme to limit emissions of CO2 from six hundred major industrial plants, starting in 2012. Proposition 23 on the California ballot, defeated in November, was an attempt to at least delay the state’s Cap-and-Trade law, AB-32, until California’s record unemployment eased. However, the slanted description appearing on both the official Voter Guide and the ballot, written by then-State Attorney General Jerry Brown and his office, the well-funded “No-on-23” campaign, and some very heavy media bias, had Californians believing that Prop. 23 would thwart efforts to curb air pollution—i.e., smog. So Prop 23 went down in flames, threatening hundreds of thousands of jobs, and perhaps a million.
The “Cooler Heads” blog relates that the adopted regulation is more than three thousand pages long, but most of the details have yet to be worked out. CARB rushed to meet a December 31 deadline set by the 2006 legislation that authorizes CARB to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. In order to protect California businesses from out-of-state competition, CARB will (initially) allocate emissions credits (aka energy-rationing coupons) for free. The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is the only precedent for free allocation of carbon credits; it resulted in windfall profits for politically connected industries and higher electricity prices for consumers.
Not surprisingly, the New York Times approves of the scheme: “[AB32] will put the state far ahead of the rest of the country in energy reform.”
The regulations, if they go into effect, will create the largest market for carbon trading in the country. (Ten states including New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and the New England states are participating in a less extensive system known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which covers only electric utilities.)
By the time the CARB program takes effect in 2012, California regulators plan to have created a framework for carbon trading with New Mexico, British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec—some of its partners in the Western Climate Initiative. But as long as Congress and the Obama administration shun cap and trade, California, instead of being the forerunner of a national movement, will remain part of a far-flung archipelago of states and provinces participating in a small carbon market.
Mary D. Nichols, CARB’s chairwoman, said, “We are well aware that we in California are on a different path from many other states in our willingness to be at the front” of the cap-and-trade movement. An idea of her mindset comes from a speech at the University of Rhode Island in November 2008, where she mentioned California’s efforts on climate change:
We know that the economic crisis we will face from unmitigated climate change could dwarf [sic] anything we have ever seen. That alone is a compelling enough reason to take swift action. But there’s another reason also, which is that developing a new clean energy economy that drives and rewards investment and innovation, creates jobs and serves as the engine for sustainable economic growth is exactly what we need at a time like this.
Transportation and utility industry representatives see Nichols’ push on climate-change regulation in California as evidence of an ingrained pro-regulatory bias.
I recollect Nichols as a former assistant EPA administrator in the Clinton years, under Carol Browner. In testimony to Congress in 2000, on phasing out the chemical fumigant methyl bromide (of great economic importance to agriculture but suspected of causing damage to the ozone layer), she claimed benefits of 32 trillion dollars! And no one questioned how she arrived at this wild number. A more reasonable value, I argued in my opposing testimony, would be zero benefits: There was no evidence of MeBr, with an atmospheric lifetime of only a few months, reaching the stratosphere; no evidence of a bromine-caused ozone depletion; and no evidence from ground-level monitoring stations of any increase in cancer-causing solar UV.
Among the industries immediately affected by the CARB rules will be producers of cement, which requires an industrial process in which the release of carbon dioxide is an integral part. Steve Regis, vice president of CalPortland, said in an interview, “We feel like we’re really exposed because 60 percent of our direct emissions are from the process—nothing we can do about them.” The re-engineering of that process, Regis said, would entail major costs, if it is even possible. He added that some California plants had recently shut down and moved their production out of state.
The midterm elections turned into a sweeping repudiation of the Democrats’ failed status quo—except, that is, in California, says Investor’s Business Daily. With the exception of the governor’s office, California has been a virtual one-party state since the 1960s. Now, thanks to decades of anti-business policies promulgated by a series of left-leaning legislatures, its economy and finances are a mess, and it is hemorrhaging jobs, businesses, and productive entrepreneurs to other states.
How bad has it gotten in the erstwhile Golden State? Consider:
Some 2.3 million Californians are without jobs, making for a 12.4-percent unemployment rate—one of the highest in the country.
From 2001 to 2010, factory jobs plummeted from 1.87 million to 1.23 million—a loss of 34 percent of the state’s industrial base.
With just 12 percent of the U.S. population, California has almost a third of the nation’s welfare recipients; meanwhile, 15.3 percent of all Californians live in poverty.
The state budget gap for 2009-2010 was $45.5 billion, or 53 percent of total state spending—the largest in any state’s history.
Unfunded pension liabilities for California’s state and public employees may be as much as $500 billion—roughly 17 percent of the nation’s total $3 trillion at the state and local level.
This disaster has been building for decades. In the end, only the voters of California could have changed things. But on Tuesday, November 2, they opted for more of the same governance. Empowering CARB regulation will only make conditions worse.
S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia and former director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service. A fellow of the Independent Institute and the Heartland Institute, he has authored books and monographs on energy policy and climate change—most recently, Unstoppable Global Warming-Every 1500 Years (with Dennis T. Avery).
It is December 2010 and time once again to reassess the sun's transition into Solar Cycle 24. What lies ahead just over the horizon? What are Solar Cycles?
The sun goes through a periodic change around every eleven years where the polarity of the sun's magnetic field changes poles. Essentially the sun's magnetic north pole becomes the south pole and vice versa. This is a normal process. As these poles realign and the magnetic field is the weakest, there is an absence of sunspots and this period is referred to as a solar minimum. A solar cycle or SC for short is measured from one solar minimum to the next.
But even though the cycle repeats, the intensity of the solar cycle varies significantly. Scientists have been monitoring sunspots since the 1700's. There observations have shown when the sun gets deafly quiet such as during the Maunder and Spörer Minimums; the world experiences great cold periods.
These periods were so cold they were referred to as the Little Ice Ages. What is different about Solar Cycle 24 and why is it relevant? Since the sun has finally entered solar cycle 24 (SC24) with the resurgence of sunspots, most people have turned away from tracking the strength of the rebound. Had they looked, they would have found that the surge into this next solar cycle so far has been rather weak.
The Average Magnetic Planetary Index (Ap index) is a proxy measurement for the intensity of solar magnetic activity as it alters the geomagnetic field on Earth. It has been referred to as the common yardstick for solar magnetic activity. Ap index measurements began in January 1932. The quieter the sun is magnetically, the smaller the Ap index.
This solar minimum is rather unusual. If we define a period of quiet sun as those months that produced an Ap index of 6 or less and compare the total number of quiet months within each solar minimum, then the results would be: Minimum Preceding Number of Months with Solar Cycle Ap Index of 6 or less
SC17 11 months
SC18 2 months
SC19 2 months
SC20 5 months
SC21 0 months
SC22 0 months
SC23 3 months
SC24 31 months and counting
Last month (November) produced an Ap index of 5. The sun still remains relatively quiet.
The sun provides us with warm sunshine that keeps our planet from becoming an uninhabitable frozen wasteland. The sun's magnetic field also protects our planet from cosmic rays that flood our galaxy. These cosmic rays are responsible for changing earth's climate by changing the degree that the earth is covered with clouds.
So the study of the sun's magnetic field is not an abstract field of research but rather one that has a direct effect on Earth's climate and weather. For the past three years during the winter, many places experienced some of the coldest, snowiest weather in decades at the same time the sun's magnetic field produced these 31 quiet months. This occurred in both the Northern and the Southern Hemispheres. This trend continues into the current winter.
What is the assessment of various solar scientists? There are some scientists that believe the sun, rather than leveling off into a new state in Solar Cycle 24, will continue to free fall throughout this solar cycle. Several scientists including David Hathaway (NASA), William Livingston & Matthew Penn (National Solar Observatory), Khabibullo Abdusamatov (Russian Academy of Science), Cornelis de Jager (The Netherlands) & S. Duhau (Argentina) and Theodor Landscheidt (Germany), have forecasted that the sun may enter a period similar to the Dalton Minimum or a more severe "Grand Minima" (such as the
Maunder Minimum or Sporer Minimum), a decade from now in Solar Cycle 25.
A few scientists including David C. Archibald (Australia) and M. A. Clilverd (Britain) have warned this might even begin in Solar Cycle 24. We are at the transition into Solar Cycle 24 and this cycle has already shown itself to be unusually quiet. I contacted David Archibald and requested an update of his graph that compares Solar Cycles 3-6 with Solar Cycles 22-24. David gladly obliged.
1. The solar minimum leading up to Solar Cycle 24 was the weakest observed in terms of Ap index since measurements first began in January 1932.
2. The sun has definitely undergone a state change.
3. Observationally, solar cycles 3-5, thus far, come very close to matching solar cycles 22-24. This supports the theory that the Earth is transitioning into a Dalton Minimum type event.
4. The winter weather has produced unusual snowfalls and cold weather in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres for approximately four years now (counting this winter in the mix). This is what might be expected if the Earth is sliding into a new Dalton Minimum.
So what might be over the horizon?
I recently compiled an early weather chronology. I had to translate over 200 pages of Old German text in the process. At around 3 pages per day, this was no simple task. This weather chronology is available here. (Icecap Note: an amazing work) Because the pdf file is 6.5 MB, it might take a little time to download. To answer the question about what might be over the horizon in regards to weather, review the chronology for the years 1798-1823, the approximate timeframe of SC5 & SC6 - the Dalton Minimum. Read post here.
Icecap Note: SIX days this month have been spotless days bringing the total for this transition to 819 days, most in 100 years. The monthly sunspot number now two years after the minimum in December 2008 has failed to reach 30, and the solar flux has not yet reached 90 sfus. To give you a perspective, the last maximum in 2000 peaked at a sunspot number of 120, down 20% from the prior cycle and the monthly flux maximum was near 200. Usually the max occurs 3 to 4 years after the minimum. But the amazing story is the Ap index as James showed - it has been ‘0’ the last two days. More after the first of the year.
Meanwhile follow the daily summary here, the monthly progression here and see more here.
See also Eric Werme’s post in the Concord Monitor here. Anthony Watts summarizes the current solar state including an Ap Index of 0 the last two days here. See table here.
