Sunspots and Ice Ages

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Sunspot cycles average about 11 years in length. But cycles that are particularly long, with much lower numbers of sunspots per time period, tend to be accompanied by colder climates on Earth. Australian astronaut Phil Chapman is concerned that Earth may be approaching such a time of low sunspot activity--and colder climate--in the next several years.

The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.

It didn't happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

...There is no doubt that the next little ice age would be much worse than the previous one and much more harmful than anything warming may do. There are many more people now and we have become dependent on a few temperate agricultural areas, especially in the US and Canada. Global warming would increase agricultural output, but global cooling will decrease it.

Millions will starve if we do nothing to prepare for it (such as planning changes in agriculture to compensate), and millions more will die from cold-related diseases. __Australian

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This fascinating PDF paper by David Archibald presents a very confident prediction of a coming period of extraordinarily cold climate due to hit Earth within the next 12 years, as a result of a cyclic solar downturn. We do not have long to wait, to see if Archibald is correct. If he is wrong, we can all sit back and have a good laugh at the ice age alarmists. If he is correct, we will all be too busy trying to mitigate the effects of a genuinely catastrophic climate change.

The “Little Ice Age” was a period of time between the late 1500s and the mid 1800s when glaciers advanced, winters in the northern hemisphere were unusually cold and the summer growing seasons were shortened. These conditions were well-documented in art and writings from the times, and are still, to this day, perceived as being unusual. One of the leading theories for why the climate changed so dramatically has to do with the number of sunspots observed during that same time period. Solar activity was extremely low, with some years having no sunspots at all. Fewer sunspots indicates fewer releases of solar radiation and hence less solar energy reaching the Earth.

Over a few years, this does not make a large impact on our climate. However over several decades, the lower amount of overall radiation reaching the Earth can have an impact on long-term weather patterns. ___Source

You will not likely read about these alarmist predictions in the New York Times, nor hear them from the BBC. The IPCC will almost certainly ignore these Chicken Little pronouncements from the "cooling alarmists", and Al Gore is too busy with his own "grand tour of doom" to consider an alternative--and much worse--catastrophe than his own pet warming apocalypse.

If the IPCC models are truly worthless, as IPCC insider and expert reviewer Vincent Gray maintains, then it is unlikely that the IPCC models will ever give us a hint of warning about a potential cooling disaster. IPCC models have all been carefully tuned to the warmer side of the scale.

Solar cycle-based predictions of climate change are refreshingly falsifiable. Solar Cycle 24 is slow off the starting blocks, and may signal a downturn in solar activity. But Solar Cycle 25 is the one that is predicted to be truly depressed. Solar Cycle 25 is due to start anywhere between 2017 and 2019, depending upon when Cycle 24 finally gets started in earnest--and how long Cycle 24 lasts. If solar energy input to Earth does turn down, and Earth's climate responds by cooling, then other predictions--such as a downturn in atmospheric CO2 levels--made by climate skeptics can be easily tested.

There are several possible physical mechanisms of solar influence on climate, which will need to be tested one by one. But it will be nice for science to return to climate studies. Falsifiable science is much to be preferred to the tautological climate models that provide only garbage out in response to garbage in.

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H/T Tom Nelson