Thursday - May 07, 2015

Prediction: Cool Summer, Long Cold Winter

The sun started “taking a nap” with many less sunspots than typical towards the end of the last solar cycle. It’s still asleep in this solar cycle, and that nap could continue into the next cycle as well. When the heat engine of our solar system is on Idle, does this mean cooler weather for all the planets, including ours?

The sun is almost completely blank. The main driver of all weather and climate, the entity which occupies 99.86% of all of the mass in our solar system, the great ball of fire in the sky has gone quiet again during what is likely to be the weakest sunspot cycle in more than a century. The sun’s X-ray output has flatlined in recent days and NOAA forecasters estimate a scant 1% chance of strong flares in the next 24 hours. Not since cycle 14 peaked in February 1906 has there been a solar cycle with fewer sunspots. We are currently more than six years into Solar Cycle 24 and the current nearly blank sun may signal the end of the solar maximum phase. Solar cycle 24 began after an unusually deep solar minimum that lasted from 2007 to 2009 which included more spotless days on the sun compared to any minimum in almost a century.

So, this cycle is quite a No-Show, and the end of the last cycle was a putz as well. Worse, this cycle’s Maximum was by all counts a Minimum. Ruh-roh Shaggy, we may be in for it.

Going back to 1755, there have been only a few solar cycles in the previous 23 that have had a lower number of sunspots during its maximum phase.
...
...  if history is a guide, it is safe to say that weak solar activity for a prolonged period of time can have a cooling impact on global temperatures in the troposphere which is the bottom-most layer of Earth’s atmosphere - and where we all live. There have been two notable historical periods with decades-long episodes of low solar activity. The first period is known as the “Maunder Minimum”, named after the solar astronomer Edward Maunder, and it lasted from around 1645 to 1715. The second one is referred to as the “Dalton Minimum”, named for the English meteorologist John Dalton, and it lasted from about 1790 to 1830 (below). Both of these historical periods coincided with colder-than-normal global temperatures in an era now referred to by many scientists as the “Little Ice Age”.

I know that last winter was pretty brutal here. This winter seemed nearly as cold, and felt like it came early and stayed late. I know it’s the end of the first week in May, and I had to get up last night to turn the heat on. 

Posted by Drew458     on 05/07/2015 at 08:50 AM   
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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