Grand Solar Minimum: The Future Looks Cold
[This is an updated version of an article originally published on electroverse.net. I’m currently travelling from Portugal to the UK, and will be back to it with new posts on Monday, September 11]
In recent years, the Sun has been at its weakest state in more than a century, with the two most recent solar cycles (24 and 25) on course to be the weakest pair in more than 200 years, since the Dalton Minimum.
This is revealed by the sunspot count (shown below) — a great barometer for solar activity:
The Sun’s output ebbs and flows on a roughly 11-year cycle.
As visualized above, the most recently completed solar cycle (24) finished up closely matching those of ‘The Centennial Minimum’ (≈1880-1914) — the previous multi-cycle period of low output, aka a ‘Grand Solar Minimum’ (GSM).
Grand Solar Minimums themselves can also range in depth and length, and, crucially for all of inhabitants of Earth, these factors determine the severity of the accompanying ‘global cooling’.
The Centennial Minimum was a modest GSM.
Conversely, one of the strongest on record was the ‘Maunder Minimum’ (1645-1715) which, as documented by NASA, sent Europe and North America into a “deep freeze”:
“From 1650 to 1710, temperatures across much of the Northern Hemisphere plunged when the Sun entered a quiet phase now called the Maunder Minimum. During this period, very few sunspots appeared on the surface of the Sun, and the overall brightness of the Sun decreased slightly. Already in the midst of a colder-than-average period called the Little Ice Age, Europe and North America went into a deep freeze: alpine glaciers extended over valley farmland; sea ice crept south from the Arctic; and the famous canals in the Netherlands froze regularly—an event that is rare today.”
The above facts are no longer permitted in mainstream scientific debates, and calling them out sees you instantly dismissed as a conspiracy theorist. History, however, will view this censorship very poorly, likely seeing it as an illustration of the dangers of propagandizing.
Discovery, it would appear, is no longer welcome in the field of climate science, we apparently know all that there is to know. But in reality, this suppression is a necessity if the AGW train is to keep on rolling. It stands that the return of a cyclically waning Sun would instantly flush alarmists’ claims of a never-ending temperature rise down the proverbial pan.
The climate system is immensely complex; to claim otherwise exposes a blinding ignorance.
Case in point: while Earth’s overall temperature trends colder during prolonged bouts of low solar activity, not all regions experience the chill. As visualized in NASA’s ‘Maunder Minimum Reconstruction Map’ (shown below), areas such as the Arctic, Alaska, and the North Atlantic actually warm during spells of otherwise ‘global’ cooling.
It could be argued that this chimes with what we’re seeing today, and, unlike the baseless ‘Polar Amplification Theory’, could explain why the Arctic is warming while the Antarctic is cooling.
The Sun also goes through Grand Solar MAXIMUMS, periods of unusually high solar activity.
The most recent maximum, ‘The Modern Maximum‘, ran through the years 1914 –the end of the Centennial Minimum– to 2007.
Global temperatures increased during this period (“global warming”) and have only recently, after a multi-year lag likely tied to ocean inertia, begun threatening to come back down.
Returning to past Grand Solar Minimums, ‘The Dalton Minimum’ was another key one.
It ran from 1790 to 1820, and is clearly discernible on the sunspot chart below:
Like the deeper Maunder before it, the Dalton brought about a period of lower-than-average global temperatures.
Historical documentation reveals that the Oberlach Station in Germany, for example, experienced a 2C decline over just 20 years, which devastated the country’s food production and led to widespread hardships and ultimately famine.
The Mechanics
Low solar activity impacts Earth’s weather/climate via a number of different mechanisms.
The most immediately noticeable impact is the reduction of energy entering the jet streams, which changes the jet’s usual strong and straight ZONAL flow to a weak and wavy MERIDIONAL one.
Depending on which side of the stream you’re on, this means you’re either in for a spell of anomalously cold or warm weather and/or a period of unusually dry or wet conditions:
This is a phenomenon long-predicted by those who study the Sun, and it’s one forecast to intensify as the Grand Solar Minimum continues its deepening.
Along with low solar activity’s impact on the jet streams, other ‘global cooling’ mechanisms include, the great conjunction, cloud-nucleating Cosmic Rays, and also The Beaufort Gyre—and its influence on the AMOC and so the climate overall.
Faced with these realities, I still question what it will take for the IPCC and their MSM lapdogs to admit that what they’ve been pedaling for the past 30+ years was based on a warped ideology, and not science.
Logic has now been twisted to such an extent that Arctic outbreaks (renamed Polar Vortexes) are now a direct result of global warming, i.e. warming = cooling; that pointing out past ‘climate fails’ is heresy; and climate lockdowns are perfectly rational.
I see the draconian future Orwell described materializing, and I fear the climate will be the least of our problems in the coming years as we seem to be ringing in the destruction of civilization all by ourselves.
‘Global Boiling’ or ‘Climate Change’ appears to be the excuse given for any freedom-stripping policy the elite deem fit.
However, rather than a ‘mann’-made phenomenon capable of being taxed away, the perceived climatic changes can be fully explained by cyclical ‘buckling’ of the jet streams (Zonal to Meridional), itself caused by a bout of historically low solar activity:
Take Europe this week, do alarmists really believe that it is carbon dioxide causing this:
For more:
Sure it looks cold https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/?model=gfs®ion=aus&pkg=T2ma&runtime=2023090718&fh=252
^Seeing as you love throwing out GFS charts, here’s one for ya. Extreme record warmth for large parts of SE AUS mid-September.
You only need: https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/
(as a purist I get rid of the dross that gives away data of sharer etc.)
Oh my goodness run for your life. Above normal is now extreme. You speak like a true climate alarmist. Well enjoy the warm weather down under.
Tumbarumba forecast 25, 24, 25, 25 C consecutively, when the long-term average is just 15 C. This is right after the mildest winter ever recorded too. Yea – I’d say that’s pretty well extreme.
It seems both parties dance around the actual issue; the word CHANGE
Stuck in an ICE AGE for millions of years. (IT) seems more likely to freeze the planet than boil it.
Did you not see above? – wavy Meridional jetstreams bring BOTH anomalous cold AND warmth to the mid latitudes.
It is spelled out quite plainly.
Of course I saw. But this ‘anomalous cold’ you speak of, was nowhere to be found this winter. It was just warmth, warmth, and more warmth for two months straight (July and August).
Well in Nelson , New Zealand ( latitude 41) we have just had the coldest winter in 5 years. This comment is based upon chill units – chill units are hours below 7 degrees. June and July were similar to prior years but August was cold, and this cold August resulted in the coldest winter here for 5 years. September has so far been cold and the apple buds are holding back waiting for warmth.
You can listen to the “infotainment” about global warming that you get from the MSM. Or you can seek out the alternative perspectives like are being presented on this website. Personally I think Cap is closer to the mark than the Green Party etc because the sun is obviously the dominant factor controlling our weather.
I don’t get this ‘infotainment’ from the MSM, old boy. I get it from looking at raw, unadulterated figures from the Bureau and personal observations. Raw data straight from the thermometer – you can’t argue with that. You also cannot argue the fact that snowfalls used to happen every year in places like Adelong NSW (300m above sea level) in the early 20th century, but now is more like a 1-in-20 year event which liars like Cap Allon would have you believe to be ‘record cold’, when it’s actually milder than it’s ever been!
Point to a lie I’ve told.
The data tell that global snow cover is increasing.
Western U.S. last winter is an example of this: all-time record-breaking snowpack across half a continent.
Ah, I wondered where our summer had gone, you nicked it! July and August were awfully dull, wet and cooler than usual here in the UK.
Can’t wait to grow apples in SW Florida
Actually… Last solar minimum wasn’t cool. Its important, sure, but there are so many actors in this theatre… os impossible to say whats coming.
If I am reading this right… this – Sunspot count, SC1 to SC25 – comparing now to the lead up in (1775-1800) our Minimum will be a new ‘ice age’ period like the last…or am I looking at it incorrectly ya’ll?
Temperatures in the run up to the Maunder Minimum were lower than current temperatures, so even if we see 2 or 3 very weak solar cycles I’m not convinced this will result in temperatures as low as those in the Little Ice Age.
Also, even among scientists who don’t agree with the alarmist IPCC position there is disagreement/uncertainty about the exact concentration at which CO2 becomes fully saturated and adding more to the atmosphere no longer causes additional warming. Some sceptical scientists think that CO2 isn’t yet fully saturated and continuing emissions could cause a few more tenths of a degree of warming. If this is the case this small amount of warming isn’t going to be at all harmful, and may well be cancelled out or exceeded by natural cooling. However if these scientists are correct and CO2 has a relatively small, but still measurable impact on temperatures then whatever happens with solar activity temperatures can’t drop as low as during the LIA.
The climate system is so complicated, with so many different forcings, a lot of which aren’t fully understood that in my opinion any scientist who predicts the change in global average temperatures between now and say the 2040’s is displaying a level of confidence that isn’t justified by current knowledge.
The only thing I’m prepared to state with 99.999% confidence is that temperatures will get nowhere near those predicted by the models, extreme weather won’t get massively worse and millions of people aren’t going to die each year i.e. there isn’t and never will be a climate emergency due to rising temperatures.
0 proof that CO2 causes global warming.
I would not bet against solar activity resulting in several decades with zero sunspots causing the expected Maunder-type of temperatures.
But…I will not know and unless you are rather young, you will not either.
It is interesting how they always talk about “greenhouse gases” particularly how methane is 80 times more potent than CO2 so we must get rid of it, all the while ignoring that the #1 greenhouse gas is water vapor and being that 70% of the Earth’s surface is water, there is nothing that can be done about it.
People are being duped on all fronts about literally everything.
The mercury thermometer was only invented in 1714. Hence I’d be sceptical of any measurements taken prior to that.
I’d be skeptical of anything prior to 1960 tbh. At least with our Australian Bureau, data is extremely spotty and inconsistent before 1960.
Temperatures are higher today due to Urban heat island effect on temps which was not the case during Maunder Minimum. So I wonder how that plays in to next minimum?!
The Antarctic is warming. Ice loss is highest ever….
Whats the point of all this ‘stuff’?
The Antarctic is cooling — check the data.
Casey and Davis are the only Antarctic sites that show a flat trend (NOT cooling). Every other Antarctic site shows warming.
For Sure lower sunspots means more cold.
In Jan 2010 a cold spell in Southern Florida killed a million fish in the Everglades.
I fought in repairing a pool pump filter with fibre glass reinforcement wondering if it would set up in the freezing temps. It did, but the solar water heaters on the roof did not. They froze creating pin prick holes making the roof into a water sprinkler.
In 2019 there were two periods of no sunspots of 30 days or more that occurred.
At Shady Haven Mobile Home Park Marina 150 dead fish floated up in front of my home in the water there.
In 2020 I spotted there were THREE periods of no sunspots in the previous 9 months. I asked if 2 periods resulted in such a vicious cold spell what would 3 do?
So I published my findings 20 Sept 2020 on Beforeitsnews.com here: https://beforeitsnews.com/environment/2020/09/unimaginable-cold-coming-this-winter-2598615.html
Sure enough that February was the Great Texas Deep Freeze, killing 705 Texans freezing them in their beds in their homes even!!!
This seems plenty of certainty to me that lower sunspot activity will bring on more cold extreme weather. 11 years from 2021 is of course 2032~~~! Stay Warm!!
Now the powers that be took down the website I referenced, and replaced it removing the third period of non sunspot activity. This level of censorship certainly costs money, so apparently there are very large financial resources backing the lies.
Check it out! How does this seem to you now?
Dallas
PS – Post Script (after writing)
PS: I just wish I had published my findings on something big coming in January 2022 based on the activity timing happening on the outer planets every six months back then. That month was planet’s earth turn to have something major happen.
It did happen. That something big was the Hunga Tonga eruption.
Big Enough???
Eight sunspots on 1/15/22 an X class halo flare on the 12th another X flare on the 14th Northern lights down to Germany. Venus had just gone past Earth and Mercury was approaching.
https://www.spaceweather.com/images2022/15jan22/hmi1898.gifhttps://www.spaceweather.com/images2022/12jan22/halocme.gif
https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=181584
The Texas deep freeze was the cold front from a cyclone from a volcano from a solar flare from Mercury in retrograde and Venus/Jupiter opposite. I was posting at Ice Age Now as Oly and gave the alignment warning ahead of time and then did play by plays as the event progressed. The cold front came through here after going through Alaska there was record snow and the cold front went east across the US. I saved info on my pute three putes ago they don’t last long and all the info goes poof. Space weather archive links above didn’t work. I could go back on there to Feb ’21 Texas freeze and find the flares and link and they won’t work another waste of time. I’m an old geezer with low tech skills. I documented SC24 flares and cyclones it’s on that dead pute over there with windows Xp five putes ago I got it used in ’08 for a hundred bucks ten years of data on it stuck. Not like a good old paperback book you can pick up anytime fifty years later and it still works fine. The Texas deep freeze was from sunspots and solar flares not from no spots months prior. It would take work to go back and recall the data but it’s all there I was watching it all 24/7 in awe posting on IAN good luck finding archives from there, all gone like they never happened. RIP, RF.
The snow on Mt Hood just about all gone now I save pics to compare with prior years. I just got this used pute so all the data from the last 2.5 years is on that pute which still works but has issues constant battle for 25 years trying to keep these putes alive.
https://www.timberlinelodge.com/snowcameras//palmerbottom.jpg?nocache=1694357495
Texas freeze was part of the effects of the Great Conjunction of 2020. That’s when the flares and volcanos started earlier in 2020 with other alignments our mag shield wasn’t ready for such impact and BOOOOM.
https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/planets/great-conjunction
For Sure lower sunspots means more cold.
In Jan 2010 a cold spell in Southern Florida killed a million fish in the Everglades.
I fought in repairing a pool pump filter with fibre glass reinforcement wondering if it would set up in the freezing temps. It did, but the solar water heaters on the roof did not. They froze creating pin prick holes making the roof into a water sprinkler. There were 150 dead fish up to 3 feet long that floated up in the Shady Haven Mobile Home Park in front of my house (now GONE due to Hurricane Ian) near the Royal Palm Marina. In 2019 there were two periods of no sunspots of 30 days or more that occurred.
In 2020 I spotted there were THREE periods of no sunspots in the previous 9 months. I asked if 2 periods resulted in such a vicious cold spell what would 3 do?
So I published my findings 20 Sept 2020 on Beforeitsnews.com here: https://beforeitsnews.com/environment/2020/09/unimaginable-cold-coming-this-winter-2598615.html
Sure enough that February was the Great Texas Deep Freeze, killing 705 Texans freezing them in their beds in their homes even!!!
This seems plenty of certainty to me that lower sunspot activity will bring on more cold extreme weather. 11 years from 2021 is of course 2032~~~! Stay Warm!!
Now the powers that be took down the website I referenced, and replaced it removing the third period of non sunspot activity. This level of censorship certainly costs money, so apparently there are very large financial resources backing the lies.
Check it out! How does this seem to you now?
Dallas
PS – Post Script (after writing)
PS: I just wish I had published my findings on something big coming in January 2022 based on the activity timing happening on the outer planets every six months back then. That month was planet’s earth turn to have something major happen.
It did happen. That something big was the Hunga Tonga eruption.
Big Enough???
I just remembered the Texas freeze was from two cyclones which met in Canada in a Fujiwhara Effect hurling the cold front down into Texas. I found the vid showing the event but the lady did not even notice the cold front that froze Texas on the vid. Two cyclones from two volcanos from solar flares from Mercury in retrograde pulled Arctic air down to the Gulf of Mexico.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujiwhara_effect
https://weather.com/news/weather/video/fujiwhara-effect-watch-two-lows-do-a-dance-above-canada
Here is an editorial paper by the solar physicist, Valentina Zharkova, who discovered how two magnetic dynamos at different depths in the Sun give the 11-year sunspot cycle and another cycle of around 350-400 years. The author says that the Sun is going to be cooling enough to lead to a mini-ice age for around 40 years with probable crop failures starting in a few years.
‘Modern Grand Solar Minimum will lead to terrestrial cooling’
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7575229/
NOAA also agrees that the sunspot number will be reducing starting in 2025 and going to zero in around a decade and that will reflect a lower solar output leading to terrestrial cooling.
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/predicted-sunspot-number-and-radio-flux
There is a paper by the solar physicist, Valentina Zharkova, who discovered how two magnetic dynamos at different depths in the Sun give the 11-year sunspot cycle and another cycle of around 400 years. The author says that the Sun is going to be cooling enough to lead to a mini-ice age for around 40 years with probable crop failures starting in a few years.
‘Modern Grand Solar Minimum will lead to terrestrial cooling’
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7575229/
NOAA also agrees that the sunspot number will be reducing starting in 2025 and going to zero in around a decade and that will reflect a lower solar output leading to terrestrial cooling.
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/predicted-sunspot-number-and-radio-flux
Here in Cleveland, Ohio USA it was was normal summer weather, 3 days of hot beach weather temperatures and the rest nice weather. That’s about normal. It’s beginning to get cool with Autumn temperatures just starting.
Cap this might interest you.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84830-5
Gradual onset of the Maunder Minimum revealed by high-precision carbon-14 analyses
Abstract
The Sun exhibits centennial-scale activity variations and sometimes encounters grand solar minimum when solar activity becomes extremely weak and sunspots disappear for several decades. Such an extreme weakening of solar activity could cause severe climate, causing massive reductions in crop yields in some regions. During the past decade, the Sun’s activity has tended to decline, raising concerns that the Sun might be heading for the next grand minimum. However, we still have an underdeveloped understanding of solar dynamo mechanisms and hence precise prediction of near-future solar activity is not attained. Here we show that the 11-year solar cycles were significantly lengthened before the onset of the Maunder Minimum (1645–1715 CE) based on unprecedentedly high-precision data of carbon-14 content in tree rings. It implies that flow speed in the convection zone is an essential parameter to determine long-term solar activity variations. We find that a 16 year-long cycle had occurred three solar cycles before the onset of prolonged sunspot disappearance, suggesting a longer-than-expected preparatory period for the grand minimum. As the Sun has shown a tendency of cycle lengthening since Solar Cycle 23 (1996–2008 CE), the behavior of Solar Cycle 25 can be critically important to the later solar activity.
Heavy SO2 plume from Alaska’s last volcanic eruption now stretches from Hawaii to Canadian Arctic then east up through Greenland, Svalbard and into the Arctic over Siberia. The hurricane off Mexico from Mexi volcano pulled the SO2 down the west coast US and the east branch goes across US into Canada.
https://www.windy.com/-Show—add-more-layers/overlays?tcso2,46.860,-59.854,3,i:pressure,m:eYmacL7
https://www.spaceweather.com/images2023/05sep23/two_cmes.gif
80F here today 83 yesterday ave 74 record 93 2020 last year 90 oohh so cold from GSM no rain forecast next ten days after ANOTHER long hot dry summer no cool summers here for twelve years millions of acres of bone dry Olympic National Forest here we need some H2O ASAP. UAH temp #3 spot no global cooling yet. another flare right side:
https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/eldon/98555/daily-weather-forecast/2157602?day=1
https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/cb/ssta/ssta.daily.current.png
https://www.solarham.net/cmetracking.htm
What a sad state of affairs this comment section is, really. Cap Allon is a chronic liar as shown by his complete DISINFORMATION on Australian weather events – and when corrected, no response is given to me and he continues to write nonsense articles on Australian weather with completely fabricated stats (such as reducing official snow level forecasts by at least 200m) or claiming ‘record cold’ at stations with less than 15 years of data!
By the way – gotta love how Cap has no problem with hosting the UAH graph on his blog in the top right corner, when it clearly shows a warming trend and that’s supposed to be the ‘skeptical’ (denialist) go-to graph! Holy hell, you can’t write this stuff.
eh mate have you ever thought about doing a course in solar physics..might enlighten you
You’ve missed my point entirely. Does the UAH graph show warming or cooling? I don’t care what’s caused it – the fact of the matter is, it has warmed. Whether entirely by nature or aided by Man, does not matter. Only that it has, in fact, warmed and that Australian winters in particular are by far the mildest they’ve ever been.
Warming by a degree or two in a 2.5 million year ice age named the Quaternary Glaciation(fourth ice age) isn’t very impressive.
Twenty percent of the land is still covered by glaciers and permafrost.
We still have to have warm clothing, warmed houses, warmed transportation, and warmed workplaces for most of the year.
I know it isn’t impressive, but it’s still a warming trend. It’s even worse in Australia where winters have warmed 2 C in Just 50 years – this is due to the circumpolar westerly belt shifting towards Antarctica, i.e., very little to do with Man (hence the cold records being set in Antarctica, while Australian winters continue to heat up). The Australian ski industry has suffered heavily because of this. I’m just saying that Cap Allon isn’t telling the most accurate story – his claims that “skiing is better than it’s ever been in Australia” and “record cold in Australia”, are patently false. Skiing has never been WORSE in Australia.
There isn’t going to be a grand solar minimum.Unbelievable how this website is like the polar (pun intended) opposite of all the warming sites.Both sides are doom mongering to high heaven.None are correct in their proclamations.
I’m not claiming the world is ending, and I base my predictions on cycles and historic documentation — there is a difference.