Decreasing solar activity means colder winters for the UK

[Alastair McDonald]

There is a write up on this web page on a paper that was published a couple
of years ago .
http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/news/46446

I wonder whether this point will be raised at Tuesday's Met Office meeting
about the weird weather we have been having.

Cheers, Alastair.

[Martin Brown]

A more complete and erudite version occurs as a side issue towards the
end of the following paper which discusses all solar forcing:

https://workspace.imperial.ac.uk/climatechange/Public/pdfs/Briefing%20Papers/Solar%20Influences%20on%20Climate.pdf

Basically there is a larger than expected change in UV irradiance which
can tweak the behaviour of the polar vortex and jetstreams. Recent
satellite observations in the hard UV have observed this directly.

We are far enough north that this can influence our winter weather. It
is certainly possible this was the mechanism of the Maunder minimum
little ice when when there were no sunspots visible at all.

NB This recent "decreased" solar activity is more like the norm in the
1880-1935 period as opposed to the abnormal doubling in 1950-1965.

See
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/Zurich_Color_Small.jpg

The suns tiny variability is itself variable.
--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[Alastair McDonald]

"Martin Brown" <|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:ymyvt.68198$qH5....@newsfe02.iad...

Thanks for that link. It is very interesting, proposing why the Little Ice
Age was confined to higher latitudes.

She did seem a bit defensive with regard to AGW, but the conclusion seems to
be that a new Grand Minimum will only buy us a little time.

"Some indicators of solar activity suggest that there has been an overall
downturn since about 1985, and also that the Sun may currently be moving
away from a Grand Maxi�mum state and towards a Grand Minimum, like the
Maunder Minimum, which it might reach within several decades. This raises
the issue that the Sun might buy some time for the world to adjust to
greenhouse gas-induced global warming. It would be rash, however, to become
complacent on this basis for several reasons. Firstly, predictions of solar
activity are notoriously difficult and prone to error. Secondly, it is not
neces�sarily the case that an Earth with a global net radiation balance but
different radiative components (viz. less absorbed solar radiation but more
"greenhouse" trapping of in�frared radiation) will have the same climate;
... Thirdly, the time bought would probably be a decade or so at most, and
on timescales of a few centuries the Sun is likely to return to a Maximum
state resulting in a climate, with a much higher greenhouse gas loading,
considerably warmer than at present."


Cheers, Alastair.