By Paul Homewood
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=7122
Back to that Grand Minimum.
As mentioned yesterday, scientists now believe we could be heading into a 50 year period of reduced solar activity similar to what happened in the mid-17th century, which could lead to a drop in global temperatures of “several tenths of a degree Celsius”.
As has been pointed out, climate is a far more complex matter than climate scientists admit, and one about which we still know very little.
Whether a Maunder-like Minimum will happen again in the next few years, and whether it will have the effect claimed, remain to be seen.
But there is considerable evidence that the Maunder Minimum did coincide with a sharp fall in temperatures across the NH, as NASA show above.
The purpose of this post is to focus on the Central England Temperature series.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/data/download.html
Although the NASA analysis, quoted above explains how low solar activity can lead to more severe winters, in England, at least, the effect appears to be all year round.
The Maunder lasted roughly from 1645 to 1715, and the drop in temperatures around this time in the CET is obvious.
The CET only started in 1659, so we can not see if the decline began earlier in the 1640s.
The 1751-60 period is fairly typical of the second half of the 18thC. The average annual mean temperature for that decade was 9.09C.
Between 1671 and 1708, the 10-year trailing average was below 9.09C every single year. The 10-year average fell to its lowest point in 1700, at 8.10C, in other words nearly a full degree below the “norm”.
We find a very similar pattern with winter and summer temperatures:
In winter, the 1751-60 average was 3.3C. The 10-year average was below this throughout the 1672 to 1706 period, with the exception of 1691, (in other words, the average for 1682/91).
This was due solely to the remarkably mild winter of 1686, one of the warmest winters in the whole series. 10-year averages slumped to 2.3C in 1684 and 1685.
In summer, the 10-year average did not get above the 1751-60 baseline of 15.4C between 1674 and 1706. The 10-year figure went as low as 14.3C in 1698.
In other words, both winter and summer temperatures were unusually low for four decades, and dropped as much a 1C below the mid 18thC numbers.
And it was not just England which was affected. HH Lamb, for instance, reproduces this analysis of the climate in Berne:
Climate, History and the Modern World
There of course will be no surprise about this, as the documented history about the glaciers in Switzerland at this time show.
Lamb goes on to show the widespread effect on harvests:
A drop of 1C in CET would see a return to the temperatures seen during the 19thC.
The authors of the latest study suggest that underlying global warming will have offset this drop by 2070, which may not be of much comfort in the meantime.
However, there is no evidence that CET is continuing to increase. Let’s look at that annual graph again:
There is a clear step up in temperatures in the late 1980s, but they have been pretty much flat since 1990. The 10-year average peaked in 2006, and has been dropping since.
Remarkably, the 10-year average is barely higher than it stood in 1738, 10.12C v 9.90C.
I would have zero confidence in forecast that said temperatures would start increasing again.
Mike Lockwood, Professor of Space Environment Physics at the University of Reading, spoke about the increasing likelihood of a grand minimum in 2013, with the BBC reporting:
Professor Lockwood doesn’t hold back in his description of the potential impacts such a scenario would have in the UK.
He says such a change to our climate could have profound implications for energy policy and our transport infrastructure.
Although the biggest impact of such solar driven change would be regional, like here in the UK and across Europe, there would be global implications too.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/entries/6d50a6bd-779a-32d6-bfca-06e4484d6835
Our warming obsessed government is busy tearing up energy infrastructure in a vain attempt to combat “global warming”, when it should instead be preparing for the very real danger of another Little Ice Age.
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February 10, 2018 at 05:43AM
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