Solar Cycle 24 is Late: What Does It Mean?

If the sun is late on its cycle, does that mean it is pregnant? Perhaps not, but what exactly does it mean?

The cycle length of cycle 22 which peaked in 1990 was 9.8 years. Landscheidt has suggested a lag of up to 8 years between solar peaks or troughs and temperatures, which would mean a peak warmth from 1995 to 1998. Global temperatures appear to have peaked in 1998. The current longer quieter cycle 23 may be behind the cooling in the last 7+ years.

... Archibald(PDF)...speculates a major cooling ahead that could rival or be worse than the Dalton Minimum. In the hyperlinked paper, he even projects the impact on some US locations based on historical trendlines. Such a cooling would of course further call into question the idea that greenhouse gases are behind all the changes in our climate and natural factors are now suddenly unimportant. In our recent stories, we have shown how important ENSO and the multidecadal cycles in the oceans are to temperatures. It is my belief that someday we will find proof that soplar changes drive the ocean cycles which drive the land temperatures.

The sun undergoes cyclical changes on multiple time scales that appear to correlate very well with temperatures. Long and relatively quiet solar cycles historically have been associated with cold global temperatures, short and very active cycles, warm periods. The current cycle 23 appears to be the longest in at least a century and may project to quieter subsequent cycles and cooling temperatures ahead. __Intellicast__via__Icecap

The Intellicast article above contains multiple graphs and images that help to clarify the otherwise confusing and controversial question of the sunspots' influence on (or correlation with) climate.

Fortunately, unlike the CAGW climate models championed by Al Gore and the IPCC, we do not have to wait 50 or 100 years to verify or falsify the theories which correlate sunspot cycles with climate change. We should be able to test these ideas quite well within the next 5 to 10 years.