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Big Drop In Solar Activity Could Cool Earth
coondoggie writes "Scientists say the Sun, which roils with flares and electromagnetic energy every 11 years or so, could go into virtual hibernation after the current cycle of high activity, reducing temperatures on Earth. As the current sunspot cycle, Cycle 24, begins to ramp up toward maximum, scientists from the National Solar Observatory and the Air Force Research Laboratory independently found that the Sun's interior, visible surface, and corona indicate the next 11-year solar sunspot cycle, Cycle 25, will be greatly reduced or may not happen at all."
Does this mean that we should be polluting more to compensate?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
The networkworld (why are we posting a solar/space article from there?) article links to a much better Cosmic Log article: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/06/14/6857473-solar-forecast-hints-at-a-big-chill
..for all of this intense activity. It needs more time to rest between cycles these days.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Don't worry, it is carbon neutral, being a biofuel. You gotta give them that, at least their flaming is environmentally friendly, if unintentionally so...
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
I love this. You think the existing models don't take solar variation into account? You have reduced a complex, multi-factor system of equations to one independent variable. Congratulations on letting anything that sounds like it agrees with you at all prove all other ideas wrong even if there's nothing contradictory at all. Sun cycles are 10 year data cycles that don't explain 100 year trends in the slightest. If you look at the climate data since the invention of the thermometer, the waves produced are already quite visible. This was the same argument they made in the 70s, when global warming was first introduced as a theory(but it was far less understood then).
Instead of offering useless conjecture about what people are going to say, how about you give us a nice solid hypothesis about how much cooler it will be when, and how that relates to existing global warming projections. I dare you to actually make a meaningful falsible claim instead of putting words in the mouth of people you disagree with.
winter is coming?
Crisis is the rule, not the exception.
Humankind has indeed proven itself to be a vile species. The great pacific garbage patch for example, was surely not created by those who was overly concerned for their environment?
There are enough precedents to indicate that it is not an excess of concern for our environment that is the fundamental problem. I just don't understand why people see it necessary to vilify the few who are.
Decreased solar output will have an impact on global temperatures, but it will take time.
Greenhouse gasses (Water, CO2, CH4, etc) do not directly interact with incoming shortwave radiation from the sun. Rather, they interact with the longwave radiation coming from the surface of the Earth. With no greenhouse gasses, the Earth would radiate (based on its temperature) and this radiation would be lost to space. What greenhouse gasses do is absorb the emitted longwave which adds energy to the molecule absorbing it. The excited state either results in a temperature increase of the molecule, or the emission of radiation. Some of this re-emitted radiation is directed downward, toward the Earth. The net result is that some energy that would be lost to space is absorbed by molecules in the atmosphere, warming it, and some is redirected back to the Earth, increasing the net incoming radiation.
The effect can be directly observed. If you look at the measured longwave radiation emitted at the top of our atmosphere, the global average temperature you would calculate would not support life as we know it (much too cold). The difference from that and our directly observed average surface temperatures are due to the greenhouse effect (the energy based on those temperatures is not making it to the top of the atmosphere).
Decreasing solar input would change part of the energy budget, but the greenhouse effect will act as a buffer (from absorbing and re-emitting longwave radiation) that would cause a delayed response.
Note that I am not a climate scientist, just a regular meteorologist who has taken a few classes in radiative transfer.
Solar activity had nothing to do with "The Year Without a Summer". It was the eruption of Tambora that caused that.
You should have moderated.
You would have had more effect, because after all, the only thing you accomplished by posting was to prove my point.
How can you claim that he proved your point? What exactly is it that he says that proves your point?
Your point was that people like to blame everything (eg, any change in climate or environment) on humans. His point was that there's no way of knowing what effect we actually have on the environment.
Both lead to the idea that we should leave stuff alone, but they aren't the same point...
The fact remains that complex systems, be they markets, ecologies, or climate, remain unbelievably complex, and we have no way of knowing what our actions could do.
And as far as banalities go, how about this -- do not mess with complex systems you don't fully understand.
More than fair. The problem is, there is a HUGE political wing that not only believes it understands the complexities of ecological change, but understands them well enough to want to impose corrective measures. Those corrective measures themselves invariably involve "messing with" markets, economies, and yes, ecologies, all at public expense.
Complexity is a double-edged sword. I'm all for not meddling with things I don't understand, and treating the planet with respect; I am consequently somewhat mistrustful of those who claim to understand our gigantically complex ecosystem well enough to tell me what I should be doing to fix it.
This has the potential to make Global Warming so much worse. Lets assume global warming is real and we're headed for a maunder minimum level of hibernation. The expected temperature increases are pretty similar to the temperature drops associated with the last major minimum. It would convince people that global warming was all a big sham or even a blessing, and in the short term the blessing idea wouldn't even be totally incorrect, since the effects of a half century long solar minimum would almost certainly be at least as devastating to civilization as global warming.
But, that means that in 50-70 years, when the little ice age ends, we could be faced with the full force of global warming in less than a decade, instead of spread out over the course of half a century. It would be even more so to late to do anything about it, short of geoengineering at a massive scale, and even I, techno-optimist that I am, have difficulty accepting the idea that we'll be able to accurately manipulate the kinds of energy needed to alter the Earth's climate in a controlled way.
It's freakin' 107.1F (41.7C) in North Texas... Come on sun, cool us off!
...hmmm why does that not sound right..
Well, to be honest, we are not that exceptional in this regard. Many a species has created its own version of the great pacific garbage patch. Growing to your limits and then crashing seems to be a biological imperative. Only we do it on a global scale - well, you might hold that one to the early photosynthesizing algae, which poisoned the reducing atmosphere of early earth with oxygen. What sets us apart is only the fact that we are blessed (?) with sentience, and should be able to look into the future, at least a little bit.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
And there's the wing that believes "business as usual" is just as good since, obviously, THEY understand the complexities...
Mostly random stuff.
And they're going to be sorely disappointed when the warming continues despite reduced solar output.
Even if the Sun went into a new Maunder Minimum Global Warming will continue because the forcing from increased GHG's (primarily CO2) overwhelms the change in insolation. There is a peer reviewed paper on the subject here: On the Effect of a New Grand Minimum of Solar Activity on the Future Climate on Earth (Feulner & Rahmstorf 2010).
So what will the "naysayers" response be to continued warming despite reduced insolation?
Local solar astronomer here - Current global warming trend is definitely not Sun driven. We went through a prolonged period of solar inactivity over the last 5 years and what do you know, temperatures kept going up. We also monitor the Sun in every conceivable wavelength and from multiple angles, so it would be pretty hard to have some significant amount of energy hitting us that we don't know about.
-Bill
Don't go counting your Told-you-so Chickens quite yet.
Global temperatures continued to rise during the previous, unusually long solar minimum, so this potential lack-of-solar-maximum will probably not reverse the trend, either.
The enemies of Democracy are
Criticism usually includes putting forth an alternative model. Not just shouting "NO! NO! NO!". The basic forcing by CO2 is a simple physical fact - every 2nd semester student can do the math. The effect is measurable, just take a spectrum. Did that myself, ages ago in a physical chemistry lab session. Measuring the increase in atmospheric CO2 is trivial. Proving that the increase is anthropogenic is trivial - just look at the isotope ratio. Measuring solar input is trivial. These are the basic forcings. Now, the feedbacks and the amount of their contribution is open, I give you that - but the basic fact of warming due to CO2 is simply not open to debate any more.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
"More than fair. The problem is, there is a HUGE political wing that not only believes it understands the complexities of ecological change, but understands them well enough to want to impose corrective measures."
And that political wing's corrective measures are overwhelmingly "minimize how much we mess with complex systems we don't fully understand." Which is a pretty logical approach.
There _is_ a reasonably middle ground. It involves taking steps in my everyday life to being a better member of planet Earth. There is a false dichotomy in your head. I use electricity, but I use less. I contribute to polluting this planet, but I also actively work with an organization that has better ideas. It's not about stopping all polluting activity, that's only possible through extinction. It's about lessening the impact. It's a real path that many are already doing. You could participate too!
Nature is not fickle.
It is amazingly robust, self healing, and self preserving and resilient.
It is consistent over eons, with constant change within limits based on energy input from the sun.
Nothing "meddlesome man" can do will have as much effect as a 2% change in the sun's output.
So your assertion that it is appropriate is questionable, and your claim that it is "not up to questioning" is just simply flat wrong.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Your post and opinion is about 15 years, or more, old.
It's pretty simply to know the CO2 is increasing, now when it was release(in some cases where) and to look at the temperature.
When other cycles go into a 'cooling' cycle, the temperature stops going up, but it DOES NOT return to previous temperature; which is what would happen if it was only a cycle effect and not a non cycle effect, like man spewing billions of tons of CO2 into the air.
COULD there be another cause? well there isn't anything in the data to indicate any other cause; however in science we know that there could very well be some currently unknown for causing this, or anything. That is why nearly all studies on any subject are seldom 100%. It becomes more accurate with time and modification. Just like Germ Theory, Evolution or gravity.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You're absolutely right. If you're a sociopath, if you honestly give no fucks when other human being suffer because of the things you do and the things you fail to do, you have no reason to take any action that will benefit anyone other than yourself. I don't mean this as a personal attack; I want to believe that you actually are capable of doing good things without the threat of eternal damnation hanging over your head, but if you honestly cannot, you are broken.
I can't make you want to do good things, like save the Earth for people who aren't born yet. But, on a social level, there are still enough people who give a shit to put pressure on sociopaths to do good things. If you don't, we will use our laws to make you. If you break those laws, we will take your things and lock you up.
Why should we, as a society, make those laws? It is the only way that the "Society" system can outlast any given member. When we reach the point where we stop making and enforcing laws that benefit the long-term stability of society over the individuals currently in it, society will collapse as a system, and something more stable will take its place. Something with a lot fewer people in it, probably. Evolution will weed out the unfit and replace them with new systems able to deal with changes, the way it always has. That's how life operates.
Says more about the meteorologist than nature....
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
More than fair. The problem is, there is a HUGE political wing that not only believes it understands the complexities of ecological change, but understands them well enough to want to impose corrective measures. Those corrective measures themselves invariably involve "messing with" markets, economies, and yes, ecologies, all at public expense.
And the other HUGE political wing believes...
With a list like that, I would start to wonder if they understood anything.
There does not exist on earth more carbon than the earth can process.
All the carbon came from the earth. It was "processed" into the earth in the past after the living material was "done" with it.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
> Germany is not switching to coal...
Putin will be very happy to hear that. He'll sell you the gas you'll need. Of course, there will be a price...
> If the political will is there...
So you are switching to coal after all.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I am often confused by this attitude. Let's assume for just a moment that all research into climate change is completely bunk. There is no man made influence on the climate at all. I don't happen to think this is the case, but purely for argument's sake let's pretend that there is no argument at all. You are completely right. We can burn all the fossil fuels we want forever and it will never change the temperature of the planet by a single degree.
What does that really change about environmental policy? We still know that these chemicals are poisonous, and that burning them as freely as we do causes health issues both for ourselves and other animals. We still know that there are limited supplies of them, and if we don't find alternatives we'll eventually run out. We still know that burning them creates unpleasant things like smog and acid rain, which, even ignoring their health affects, are not nice to have around.
Ignoring completely the idea of climate change and the affect that we may or may not be having on the long term health of the ecosystem, shouldn't we be doing exactly what climate change research says we should be for all kinds of reasons besides climate change itself? Now add in the possibility, the very real possibility, that climate change theories are correct. It's really just one more reason on top of lots of others, not a sole driver of policy. Unless you believe that Jesus will return before the last drop of oil is burned, there's every reason to curb our dependence on fossil fuels and come up with viable and sustainable alternatives.
(Note: I'm not a peak oil nut. I have no idea whether we're going to start running out of oil in 20 years, 50 years, or 100 years; and yes, I have every confidence that the clever buggers in the oil industry will continue to figure out new ways to extract it. However, unless you believe that the Earth is some sort of oil factory that we can crank up at our convenience, you must know that eventually there won't be anymore. Even if the entire interior of the planet is a giant vat full of the stuff, that's still a finite amount.)
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
COULD there be another cause?
You mean, aside from the fact that the last forty or fifty years we were in a grand maximum of solar activity, the highest seen on earth since the very beginning of the Holocene? And that, given the unknowns and the egregious speculation that has occurred in lieu of actual research concerning the feedback, this is a confounding factor that has been more or less completely ignored by the AGW zealots? Do you mean to ignore (as those zealots wish to) the Maunder minimum and Dalton minimum, the "Year without a summer" in the Dalton minimum, and the other, substantial evidence that global climate is first and foremost driven by solar activity and at most modulated by everything else?
To put it more seriously, think about putting error bars on the parameter that controls the feedback. Be sure to make them as large as the current estimates of the parameter itself, as we have no measurements to support one value over any other, only oversimplified model computations that ignore enormous amounts of the complex dynamics of the climate that are in indifferent agreement with the past and incapable (so far) of predicting the future. If we don't even know the correct sign of that parameter, let alone its magnitude, it is really easy to build a model that explains global warming over the last 160 years -- variations in solar activity that almost precisely parallel the observed increases in temperature, right up to the grand maximum (in both solar activity and global temperature) in the last few cycles of the twentieth century. Don't forget to allow for the 10-20 year lag in solar forcing and response in terms of global temperature change (clearly evident in the data and completely understandable given the vast heat capacity of the ocean and the complex feedback loops associated with the major oscillations in circulation).
As for the "every chemistry or physics student knows" -- well, I teach physics including electrodynamics, and to me it is by no means clear that we have a particularly good idea of the full dynamics of heat trapping by CO_2 in the upper atmosphere, including all feedback loops and the climate sensitivity. It is hard to even build an accurate model, given that the trapping is such a small effect that NASA's satellites cannot directly measure it (and the concentrations we are talking about are very small indeed).
The fundamental problem is that impending doom sells. It sells everything. It sells careers. It sells grants. It sells congress on providing money for those grants. It sells a completely artificial market with numerous opportunities for con men to get rich involving things like "carbon futures" or "carbon credits" (look carefully at just where Al Gore and his cohorts are invested, and I mean financially invested, if you want to see what I mean). It sells newspapers. It sells scientific journals. It sells novels and television shows. Even complete crackpot whacko doom such as Harold Camping's incredible shrinking Rapture sells -- sells to the tune of a hundred million dollars. The end of the world in 2012 sells. The earth being hit by entirely speculative and improbable coronal mass ejections in 2013 -- specifically, in 2013, not 2012 or 2014 -- sells. Asteroids hitting the earth sells. Back in the day, nuclear war and MAD sold. A glance at Hollywood's list of disaster movies, TV ditto, novels ditto, and sure, speculative science publications galore ditto, is enough to prove rather conclusively that impending doom sells!
Science -- and I mean good science, the kind that is cautious and pessimistic and that hesitates to state unproven speculations as if they are definite proven facts -- does not sell, alas. Not in our bored and jaded culture. Do a study of earthworm mating habits that concludes with the observation that earthworms globally are doing rather well and that their critical contributions to our ecology are proceeding in an entirely natural and appropriate w
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
That link requires AGU membership. For non-members: Feulner and Rahmstorf's paper (pdf)
There will always be global warming, so long as there is money to be made from it.
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
I'll go away as soon as you explain the difference between the 1990 IPCC predictions for and the actual measured temperatures reported in HadCRUT for 1990-2011.
No you wont, because the temperatures are well within the prediction envelope. As is sea level rise. Sea level rise stands a chance of breaking through the top of the prediction envelope soon.
A slight reduction in insolation can only be good. But it's temporary reduction and therefore not a solution to the problem.
Are you going away?
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Yep, as long as you don't look at the real data we've been steadily cooling since 1998. My weather girl says it's colder now then it's been since God created weather. She's pretty and blond, so she must be smart.
But if you actually look at the temperature record, last year was the warmest on record and the one before was the third warmest and we've been on a steady warming trend for 40 years.
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It will get warmer.
It will get colder.
Repeat.
It is irrefutable.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Except for the fact we've been cooling for the last 13 years, ...
Yes, if you cherry pick 1998 as your starting point you can contrive to make it look like maybe there's been a little cooling. But seriously, who uses 13 years periods for something like this? Climatologists generally use 30 year periods. CO2 is like the rising carrier signal that the natural variability noise signal sits on. Rising CO2 levels don't lead to a monotonic rise in temperatures, just a bias toward higher temperatures. Natural variability can overcome that bias over periods of less than 15 or 20 years.
You mean, aside from the fact that the last forty or fifty years we were in a grand maximum of solar activity, the highest seen on earth since the very beginning of the Holocene? And that, given the unknowns and the egregious speculation that has occurred in lieu of actual research concerning the feedback, this is a confounding factor that has been more or less completely ignored by the AGW zealots?
Completely ignored? So responses like the three explanations listed here, as well as all of the discussion in the comment section, is "completely ignoring" the issue? Or how about this article, featuring Stanford University "completely ignoring" the impact of solar activity. New Scientist also "completely ignored" solar activity in this article as well.
For something that the "AGW zealots" have "completely ignored", Google seems to find a hell of a lot of sources discussing how solar activity has some effect on global warming, but is not the primary cause.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein