Sun and Earth Moving in Opposite Directions?
A few months ago, I discussed the challenges that forced me to modify the methodology that I use in making the long-range weather forecasts for The Old Farmer’s ÃÛÌÒÁµÈË.
The two primary challenges were that (1) increasingly, over the past two decades, the actual weather has been warmer than that forecast by our traditional forecast methodology, and (2) we are in a period of low solar activity that is cooling Earth, thereby offsetting some of that warming.
I offered that the fact that solar activity (the driver of the ÃÛÌÒÁµÈË’s long-range forecasts) in recent years has suggested that temperatures should have been relatively cool represents strong evidence that there is some other factor causing warming, which would most likely be the increase in greenhouse gasses caused by human activities.
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Further, I cautioned that “I do expect that solar activity over the next 15 to perhaps 50 years will remain low. And if I am correct, this will keep Earth’s temperatures cooler than they would otherwise be, although still continuing a general year-to-year warming trend. Then, once solar activity returns to near-normal levels, temperatures would jump significantly higher—perhaps on the order of one to two degrees F.â€
Since I wrote those words, solar researchers have raised similar concerns. Recent research, led by Valentina Zharkova at the UK’s Northumbria University, predicted rapidly decreasing magnetic waves for the three solar cycles from 2021 to about 2054. According to her model, solar activity as expressed by sunspots and solar flares will be reduced by as much as 60 percent during this period.
Leading solar researcher Javaraiah Javaraiah of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, in a paper published in the journal Solar Physics in November 2017, agreed, predicting that cycles 25 and 26 would be weaker than cycle 24, which was the weakest cycle in more than 100 years.
According to Zharkova: “In cycle 26, the two waves exactly mirror each other, peaking at the same time but in opposite hemispheres of the Sun. We predict that this will lead to the properties of a ‘Maunder Minimum.’â€
The Maunder Minimum was the period from about 1645 to 1715, when sunspots and related solar activity were practically nonexistent and there was a time of unusually cold weather in much of the world.
Zharkova expressed the same concern that we did, when she stated, “I hope that global warning will be overridden by this effect, giving humankind and Earth 30 years to sort out our pollution. The downward impact on global warming will last until the 2050s, when the Sun’s two magnetic waves become active again.â€
Find the long-range forecasts in this year’s edition of .
Michael Steinberg
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Cooling is offsetting fictional warming ? Please tell it to the lemmings . This makes no sense and is geared to the hand wringers.
Nailed it.
The wackadoodles are out in force! The only people who deny that mankinds cumulative activities are affecting the Earth's climate are the ignorant or ones with a political agenda. It's science, people! It's not a socialist plot to take your money, your guns and your women. Jeez, spare me your mindless, politically driven hysteria.
I like the science part, the problem is, I, like most ordinary people, have not seen the data, so I cannot tell you what I believe. The ignorant need to be educated, and confidence in the integrity of the data reclaimed. I see youtube videos of adjusted data (fake?) vs raw with no explanation as to the adjustment. A full chain-of-explanation needs to be provided, and i worry that the ease of using computer guys to create/adjust data is not being appropriately reviewed by climate science and sensor engineering people, and peer reviewed by other related science disciplines. Government, policy, industry, Climategate, competing interests just add to the confusion (I can never believe a politician who tries to talk about science, or claims to have invented the internet). Bias needs to be removed from the research as Nobel author D Kahneman in 'Thinking Fast and Slow' indicates -he has "yet to meet a successful scientist who lacks the ability to exaggerate" - to do this we need good quality data, and a good amount of it, and processes to filter bias.
I think a well-vetted systems-level view needs to be implemented that recognizes the earth is a very very large and complicated system, lots of inputs involved, always more to be known, inclusive of various science disciplines, adding to it new technologies as they go online. I saw on C-SPAN NASA pitching funding requests for Spaceweather, certainly this has to be a positive thing and only shows there is always more to learn.
I am quite late to the game in these comments, but just came across this article today while searching this topic because of a radio show I listened to on my way to work at 3:30 am CST. I am a life-long lover of all things space-related since the age of 5 when I was glued to a 7" black and white TV watching the first moon landing. But I digress.
I confess to much frustration with those who continue to insist that climate change is anything more than man-made. I want to shake them and ask if they have forgotten ANYTHING they learned in junior high school regarding evolution and the dinosaurs. Yes, I know that is very simplistic, but you can break this down to BE very simplistic. Simply put, the Earth's climate has gone through periods where there were no ice caps on either pole, the seas were much higher, the temperatures were much warmer, and shallow inland seas covered much more of the surface of the Earth. The oxygen level was much higher, as well, leading to the development of huge insects, and ultimately of huge dinosaurs. Then the asteroid/comet struck in what is now part of Mexico, wiping out all of the dinosaurs and throwing the Earth into a sort of nuclear winter for tens of thousands of years. My point is, the Earth has gone through untold numbers of cycles of hot and cold long before mankind was here, and it will continue to do so long after we are gone. Yes, I have no doubt we are exacerbating the problem. However, for any political party to DARE suggest the United States has sole responsibility to fix the problem is inexcusable, when Asian countries are simply not called to account for their reprehensible pollution problems.
