Sun to Earth: Look, Still No Spots!

Compared to all the spots in 2001 (on the left), our 2009 sun (on the right) looks quite nude. Is it just a coincidence that the Earth is experiencing global cooling at this time? Despite all the dire predictions of dying reefs, melting icecaps, and worldwide droughts, the reefs and icecaps keep coming back from cyclical downturns. Antarctic sea ice is growing so fast that it threatens to create a cooling feedback effect in the Southern Hemisphere. It is important to understand that Antarctic sea ice has an order of magnitude greater effect on Earth's heat balance than Arctic sea ice.

What does the spotless sun portend for our near-future climate?

.....This was a period in the Little Ice Age when sunspots became very rare, as noted by observers of the era. During one 30-year period within the Maunder Minimum, astronomers recorded only about 50 sunspots. Although a simplistic correlation is rightly contested, the Maunder Minimum thus appears to coincide with the middle - and the severest part - of the Little Ice Age.

Moreover, a second time a cycle was delayed like our current ‘Solar Cycle 24’ occurred during the so-called Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790. Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon’s Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.

Thus, what currently is happening to the average temperature of the Earth’s surface? Since at least 2001, it has been falling, and dramatically so during the last two years. _Source

The connection between sunspots and Terran climate is not direct, but is rather mediated by energy fluxes and particle "winds" interacting with the Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere, with the likely involvement of extra-galactic cosmic rays to boot. Ocean oscillations are a more proximate manifest determinant of climate control.

H/T Tom Nelson