Upcoming Solar Cycle Hints at Mini Ice Age Climate

Centuries of sunspot observations show a connection between sunspot numbers and long term climate. Weak sunspot activity occurred during cooler periods and strong sunspot activity occurred during warmer periods.

Sunspot activity was “little to none” during the Maunder and Dalton Solar Minimums. Collectively, these minimums were associated with the Little Ice Age. Sunspot activity increased from the middle of the 19th Century to the end of the 20th Century. This activity caused the warming that happened since the Little Ice Age.

NASA scientists have discovered another method that they could use to anticipate solar activity… Magnetic field activity on the sun. Thes sun’s magnetic field behaves a certain way when the sun is active and a certain way when the sun is not as active. Observations of the sun’s magnetic field activity, combined with traditional solar tracking methods like sunspot activity, hints that this upcoming solar cycle is going to be weaker than the last one.

This will bring us to the conditions that existed during the Dalton Minimum. To see what is in store for our near future, look back at what happened the last time the sun behaved the way scientists expect it to behave.

From Electroverse:

Like the deeper Maunder and Spörer Minimums preceding it, the Dalton brought on a period of lower-than-average global temperatures. The Oberlach Station in Germany, for example, experienced a 2C decline over 20 years, which devastated the country’s food production.

The Year Without a Summer also occurred during the Dalton Minimum, in 1816. It was caused by a combination of already low temperatures plus the aftereffects of the second largest volcanic eruption in 2000 years: Mount Tambora’s VEI 7 on April 10, 1815.

The earthquakes and tsunamis that followed killed tens of thousands of people living on the surrounding Indonesian islands. But Tambora’s eruption wasn’t of much interest to Europe and the U.S., not initially at least — the news was focused on the Napoleonic Wars and the Battle of Waterloo on Sunday, June 18, 1815, in which the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon Bonaparte at the expense of 65,000 men.

The newspapers were preoccupied with the battle right up until the start of winter in 1815, when the weather turned decidedly whacky. And by 1816, the climate was dominating headline news as both Spring and then Summer failed to arrive.

One Virginia resident recalled, “In June another snowfall came and folks went sleighing. On July 4, water froze in cisterns and snow fell again, with Independence Day celebrants moving inside churches where hearth fires warmed things a mite.”

Clothes froze on the line in New England, ice on ponds and lakes was reported in northwestern Pennsylvania in both July and August, and Virginia had frosts in August. The temperature occasionally got into the 90s, but then would drop to nearly freezing in just a few hours.

Crops that had managed to sprout were frozen out in early June, replanted, and frozen again in July. Very few crops were actually harvested, and of those that were, the yields were very poor. In turn, food and grain prices skyrocketed — for example, in 1815, oats sold for $0.12 a bushel but by the next year, a bushel would set you back $0.92.

And the story was the same across the world:

The potato crop in Ireland rotted in the ground resulting in widespread starvation.

In England, France and Germany wheat crops failed leading to bread shortages and food riots and looting.

Northern China was also hard hit with thousands of people starving to death.

While in southern Asia, torrential rains triggered a cholera epidemic that killed many more.

The sun is “telling us” that things are about to get colder, not warmer, in our near future. The Ice Man is coming. Thanks to Ex-PH2 for the Electroverse link.

Category: Global Warming, Science and Technology