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Could this be a possible reason for our bad weather? This graph shows the numbers of sun spots observed on the sun's face and follows an approximately 11 year cycle. While a lack of sunspots doesn't correlate directly to cold/bad weather, a series of cycles showing less and then very little activity certainly does.




This graph shows the current activity in blue/black and the forecast activity in red. The fact that the current activity looks as if it might be well below the forecast activity does not bode well. The Marshall Space Flight Centre has revised its prediction and is now predicting a high in the sunspot number in the mid 70s, a number which hasn't been seen since the early 1800s, a time called the Dalton Minimum when a German weather station recorded a drop in average temperatures of 2C over a period of 20 years.

Others, based on a change in angular momentum of the sun caused by the conjunction of the outer gas giants, Neptune and Uranus here and here are also predicting that we are due to experience another Dalton Minimum type event resulting in a cold spell of about 40 years. The Little Ice Age, of which the Dalton Minimum was a part, had a temperature reduction of about 1.0C according to reconstructions.

This level of temperature reduction would have to be adjusted by our current 0.6C rise in temperature due to global warming so we could still see a reduction in temperatures to those not experienced for well over a hundred years.

I shall be watching the sunspot numbers with great interest. Meanwhile I am getting a good store of wood in and insulating my house.

kenneal - lagger wrote:Could this be a possible reason for our bad weather? This graph shows the numbers of sun spots observed on the sun's face and follows an approximately 11 year cycle.

But the graph only shows one "11 year cycle" so gives no indication of how "approximately" anything is followed. I'm very suspicious of using sunspots as a scapegoat for anything. They are a long way away.

The Dalton Minimum reference shows the cycle back to the 1600s.

Sunspots may be a long way away but where they are is the main source of our energy on earth and always has been. I'm not denying global warming just saying that there may also be an underlying shift as well as global warming: indeed global warming may be mitigating a current loss of heat from the sun.

The other possible cause of the bad/unusual weather patterns at the moment could also be the warming of the Arctic which is decreasing the speed of the jet Stream, causing it to meander and allowing cold polar air to reach south on a more regular basis.

It will be interesting to see how things pan out over the next few years. I'm taking precautions on the basis that it is going to be very cold, though. Better safe than sorry!

kenneal - lagger wrote:The Dalton Minimum reference shows the cycle back to the 1600s.

Sunspots may be a long way away but where they are is the main source of our energy on earth and always has been. I'm not denying global warming just saying that there may also be an underlying shift as well as global warming: indeed global warming may be mitigating a current loss of heat from the sun.

The other possible cause of the bad/unusual weather patterns at the moment could also be the warming of the Arctic which is decreasing the speed of the jet Stream, causing it to meander and allowing cold polar air to reach south on a more regular basis.

It will be interesting to see how things pan out over the next few years. I'm taking precautions on the basis that it is going to be very cold, though. Better safe than sorry!

I agree with regards to sunspot activity and it's relevance to earth's climate. However, I would also add it could just as well be argued that current loss of heat from the sun may be mitigating global warming. This is potentially very dangerous since it will allow some to argue for continuing with BAU. When, eventually, the sun starts putting out full strength again we could conceivably see a sudden jump in global temperatures as a result.

kenneal - lagger wrote:
The other possible cause of the bad/unusual weather patterns at the moment could also be the warming of the Arctic which is decreasing the speed of the jet Stream, causing it to meander and allowing cold polar air to reach south on a more regular basis.

That's a much more down to Earth, and likely to be part of, the explanation.

The proportion of light emitted in the UV band falls with less sunspot activity. It's this UV light that gets to ground level and is responsible for most of the 30 Deg or so of Forced Heating that makes Earth habitable. Thus any variation in UV Levels has a disproportionate effect.

The mechanism that triggers these Minima isn't understood and, quite frankly, one could start today for all we know. The best known is the Maunder Minimum which lasted for 70 Years!

As mentioned above the short term relief from the effects of Global Warming would make things much worse in the long run.

More information here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sp%C3%B6rer_Minimum

The paper most commonly quoted is Reference 1

EDIT TO ADD: As Solar panels use UV light for the most part it will be interesting to see how panel performance alters. There's the potential to gather a lot more data than ever before.

Here's the reason for our current cold spell



I haven't seen yellow on one of these maps for ages. It's over land, I suppose, so it could be colder to the north than over the ocean thus driving the wind a bit faster.

Our little ball of rock has its own magnetic field.

When the Sun's own magnetic field crashes into ours there is a teardrop shaped area of increased magnet flux known as the magneto-sphere.

This magneto-sphere is wonderfully efficient at blocking out cosmic radiation. Without there would be no life on this planet and without our own magnetic field there would probably no atmosphere either.

When the Sun's field is strongest so the shield is strongest.

Sun spots are a visual indicator of the strength of the Sun's magnet field.

Ergo sun-spots directly impact our planet no matter how far away they are.

It is but a short step from there to look at cloud seeding aerosol nuclei from cosmic radiation degradation at circum-polar latitudes (Svensmark).

From Calder's web version of Svensmark's latest paper published by the Royal Astonomical Society.




Ignoring these effects is one of the reasons that current climatic models are less than accurate.

It isn't global warming denial; it's science.

Global warming can work on top of these effects, JSD. The current cooling of the sun from its peak in the (I think) Eighties should be causing large scale cooling but we still have overall global warming and shrinkage of the Arctic ice.

Well JSD we agree on something else although as Ken points out the mechanisms of Global Warming have other factors as well.
The million dollar question is which factors are beyond our control and what can we do with the bits we can control.

You're right about the atmosphere needing the magnetic fields protection. Mars with no field to speak of has next to nothing and free oxygen certainly wouldn't be around.

Let's hope that we never get to find out first hand....

I think you're missing the obvious here. Sunspots would affect the global weather, not just regional phenomena.

The anomalies we've seen in the past couple of years are clearly northern hemisphere, and are related to the track of the northern jet stream. If it were sunspots it would affect the southern jet stream too -- perhaps more because when the Earth reaches perihelion, during the northern winter, the southern hemisphere is tilted more towards the southern pole.

The most probable cause I've seen so far is that the North Atlantic Oscillation has flipped, so we'll be like this for perhaps a decade or so. Personally, that's sweet music to my ears! (I'm feeling great today after an afternoon in yesterday's cold drizzle tramping around the hills of north Oxfordshire )

According to what I have read on this the Northern and Southern hemisphere weather systems work in different ways because of the different massing of land and water. The northern hemisphere is more affected than the south because of the large land masses around the polar region which store cold and amplify any effects. The lack of land around the southern polar regions mean that the wind and sea carry on much as normal although to slightly greater or lesser extent.