6 ms·

Winter is Coming – Super Grand Solar Minimum

61 points by olivermarks 8y ago

starbeast 8y ago
"In the press release, we didn’t say anything about climate change. My guess is when they heard about Maunder minimum, they used Wikipedia or something to find out more about it." - Valentina Zharkova https://theconversation.com/the-mini-ice-age-hoopla-is-a-giant-failure-of-science-communication-45037 https://theconversation.com/the-mini-ice-age-hoopla-is-a-gia... edit - what I really want to know is why the people who stand so utterly in disbelief about the wide ranging study of fluid dynamics and the effects of the changing spectra of light absorption, transmission and radiation in the atmosphere here on earth, especially when it involves the phases of matter that we are generally most used to, are so quick to put their chips down on a single study predicting the long term magneto-hydrodynamics of an entire star.
- arethuza 8y ago
  You are assuming that everyone works from evidence towards conclusions - some people start with the conclusions they want then pick the evidence that supports those conclusions.
  - starbeast 8y ago
    Thank you for assuming that I was assuming that, is nice of you as it would be really quite lovely if I was still so innocent, unfortunately I was just being deeply sarcastic, I'm sorry. I am from the UK you see, where policy based evidence is some kind of official standard woven throughout business and politics. As long as it looks official, that's all that matters.
- Eiriksmal 8y ago
  That was a fun article, starbeast, but the most interesting part was buried at the end: "So it seems Zharkova’s justification is based on media extrapolation of her own press release and Wikipedia, not the extensive peer-reviewed literature on the Maunder minimum itself. I emailed Zharkova and she sent me two studies that support her views, but they aren’t representative of the literature and I don’t believe she has critically evaluated their content." - Michael J. I. Brown, author of The Conversation article So the author of the article is upset that the astronomer in question never thought about the correlation between reduced solar activity and a mini-ice age until hearing the connection from the media. After she decides that, yes, "We didn’t mention anything about the weather change, but I would have to agree that possibly you can expect it [a mini ice age]." He determines that a) Zharkova doesn't know what she believes and b) even if she did, her peer-reviewed literature is inferior to his own and she obviously doesn't what she's talking about. Mr. Brown then concludes by declaring there will be no mini-ice age, without any proof, drawing from the weasly "More recent studies, including those by Lean, find the solar irradiance varies less than was thought in 1997."
  - starbeast 8y ago
    >So the author of the article is upset that the astronomer in question never thought about the correlation between reduced solar activity and a mini-ice age until hearing the connection from the media. After she decides that, yes, "We didn’t mention anything about the weather change, but I would have to agree that possibly you can expect it [a mini ice age]." He determines that a) Zharkova doesn't know what she believes and b) even if she did, her peer-reviewed literature is inferior to his own and she obviously doesn't what she's talking about. If a mathematician and astrophysicist pushing their theory about the inner working of the sun has only just thought about potential impacts on climatology due to sudden media excitement, then they have probably just skimmed it compared to actual climatologists. There is already existing research into the effects of a grand minimum on climate change, is not as though climatologists aren't going to think to look into that. Here's a paper from 2010; "On the effect of a new grand minimum of solar activity on the future climate on Earth" http://www.pik-potsdam.de/%7Estefan/Publications/Journals/feulner_rahmstorf_2010.pdf http://www.pik-potsdam.de/%7Estefan/Publications/Journals/fe... Here's the summary - "In summary, global mean temperatures in the year 2100 would most likely be diminished by about 0.1°C. Even taking into account all uncertainties in the temperature re-construction, the forcings, and the model physics, the overall uncertainty is estimated to be at most a factor of 3, so the offset should not be larger than 0.3°C. Comparing this to the 3.7°C and 4.5°C temperature rise relative to 1961 1990 until the end of the century under the IPCC A1B and A2 emission scenarios, respectively, a new Maunder type solar activity minimum cannot offset the global warming caused by human greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, any offset of global warming due to a grand minimum of solar activity would be merely a temporary effect, since the distinct solar minima during the last millennium typically lasted for only several decades or a century at most." Also, the scientist in question says that at best, "the Sun buys us time to stop these carbon emissions", so she is still worrying about the climate getting hotter.
  - Retric 8y ago
    Look anyone that thinks their is a linear relationship between steady state temperate and heating has no idea what they are talking about. “A 2015 study looked at a 2 watts per square meter decrease causing a 0.13-degree celsius effect. A four times larger effect would be 0.5-degree celsius.” Black body radiation for example is t^4 on the Kelvin scale. Which is why Mars sees temperatures as high as 20C even though it gets 590 watts per square metre vs 1,361 watts per square metre for Earth. Note our moons are a better direct comparison as they don’t have any atmosphere.
opendomain 8y ago
So - this is predicting cooler weather by 0.5 degrees Celsius that could last up to 40 years? This is not climate change ' this is due solar activity being out of alignment with the earth. However, this may cause people to believe global warming may not vve caused by humans.
- api 8y ago
  It would mitigate anthropogenic warming until the sun wakes back up, then wham-o and bye bye Miami.
- isoprophlex 8y ago
  And if we keep increasing CO2 concentration, a perfect shitstorm 40 years later once the effect wears off...
- guscost 8y ago
  How is this not climate change? It's a (predicted) change in the climate.
  - onion2k 8y ago
    When people say 'climate change' they mean 'man-made climate change' in the context of any normal discussion. That should be obvious.
    - monochromatic 8y ago
      When people mean that, they should say anthropogenic.
  - abootstrapper 8y ago
    Because when people talk about “climate change” they’re mostly referring to the change in the climate due to the increase in carbon emissions due to human activity.
    - guscost 8y ago
k_ 8y ago
I'm worrying; could it hide the effects of global warming? (or whatever name is used now) I'm afraid this could result in even less support from the governments and/or less effort to reduce emissions and other climate-changing actions. Which could be disastrous at the end of the ~ 40 years...
- onion2k 8y ago
  More optimistically, this could buy us a ~40 year stay of execution that'll be very useful in actually fixing the problems.
  - k_ 8y ago
    I like this point of view :) Sadly, I'm having trouble believing in it, but I would love being wrong on that.
  - hyperbovine 8y ago
    And what, pray tell, gives you cause to believe that we would spend those 40 years productively addressing said problems? Because all available evidence seems to point to the contrary.
    - erikpukinskis 8y ago
      People already are doing the work. I’m doing the work. We need time.
    - sgt101 8y ago
      I'm with you, but to be fair there are compelling reasons to ditch fossil fuels without global warming... poison smog, geopolitics, less good motors (as in not a powerful and not as reliable), noise...
    - onion2k 8y ago
      And what, pray tell, gives you cause to believe that we would spend those 40 years productively addressing said problems? I live in an apartment with a view over a port that maintains the ships that build offshore wind farms. They've been getting busier and busier over the past decade. I literally see people working on (a small part of) the solution every day.
duckqlz 8y ago
We had all better do our part and emit as much carbon as possible to avoid the incoming solar winter!
abominator 8y ago
Christ. Those social icons and reaction smiley faces are repellent. And a completely unrelated video set to autoplay, right in the middle of the article. This site is an abomination.
- slowmovintarget 8y ago
  That's the reason to run adblockers... You may not be able to if you're on mobile. Much of the web is horrifically bad without ad blocking these days.
olivermarks 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum#Little_Ice_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum#Little_Ice_Age The last Maunder Minimum was between 1645 to 1715 but there is no agreement (as usual) on whether it was a major contributor to the 'mini ice age' that occurred at the same time and had a big impact on food supplies. Interesting that Annie Maunder was not recognized at the time due to lack of formal education qualifications. Two papers were published in Edward Maunder's name in 1890[4] and 1894,[5] and he cited earlier papers written by Gustav Spörer.[6] Because Annie Maunder had not received a university degree, due to restrictions at the time, her contribution was not then publicly recognized.[7]
ChuckMcM 8y ago
The lack of Solar variability in the IPCC models is a "known issue"[1] which is, in my opinion, an under stated position as the bulk of the heat/energy in the Earth's system comes from the Sun. That said, the science around it is pretty interesting. Whether or not it puts the Earth into a cooling trend it is affecting the propagation of radio waves around the planet and as an amateur radio operator, having a 'quiet' Sun creates a pretty unique opportunity for operating in a previously unexplored solar regime. [1] More research to investigate the effects of solar behaviour on climate is needed before the magnitude of solar effects on climate can be stated with certainty. -- IPCC 2007 Working Group (https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch1s1-4-3.html https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch1s1-4...)
- ben_w 8y ago
  Out of curiosity, I just looked up solar variations. Wikipedia says the average (over a year) solar irradiance goes from 1365.5 /m^2 to 1366.5 W/m^2, which is larger than the estimate in your link. By comparison, the estimated net effect of anthropogenic temperature forcing is 1.5 W/m^2. Yes, this is relevant and should be in models. However, I would be shocked if they have made no effort to include it. It’s a cycle with straightforward values, thinking they’re ignoring it completely is like thinking Apple has made an iPhone app and forgotten to test it on an iPad for 40 years. Indeed, most of your link appears to be the science version of “we tested it on every combination of device we can, but we’d like some budget to go on eBay and get an original iPad running iOS 3”.
ohiovr 8y ago
This will cause the oceans to absorb a lot of CO2 from the atmosphere due to increased solubility of the lower temperature ocean water.

61 points by olivermarks 8y ago

"In the press release, we didn’t say anything about climate change. My guess is when they heard about Maunder minimum, they used Wikipedia or something to find out more about it." - Valentina Zharkova https://theconversation.com/the-mini-ice-age-hoopla-is-a-giant-failure-of-science-communication-45037 https://theconversation.com/the-mini-ice-age-hoopla-is-a-gia... edit - what I really want to know is why the people who stand so utterly in disbelief about the wide ranging study of fluid dynamics and the effects of the changing spectra of light absorption, transmission and radiation in the atmosphere here on earth, especially when it involves the phases of matter that we are generally most used to, are so quick to put their chips down on a single study predicting the long term magneto-hydrodynamics of an entire star.

arethuza 8y ago
You are assuming that everyone works from evidence towards conclusions - some people start with the conclusions they want then pick the evidence that supports those conclusions.
- starbeast 8y ago
  Thank you for assuming that I was assuming that, is nice of you as it would be really quite lovely if I was still so innocent, unfortunately I was just being deeply sarcastic, I'm sorry. I am from the UK you see, where policy based evidence is some kind of official standard woven throughout business and politics. As long as it looks official, that's all that matters.
Eiriksmal 8y ago
That was a fun article, starbeast, but the most interesting part was buried at the end: "So it seems Zharkova’s justification is based on media extrapolation of her own press release and Wikipedia, not the extensive peer-reviewed literature on the Maunder minimum itself. I emailed Zharkova and she sent me two studies that support her views, but they aren’t representative of the literature and I don’t believe she has critically evaluated their content." - Michael J. I. Brown, author of The Conversation article So the author of the article is upset that the astronomer in question never thought about the correlation between reduced solar activity and a mini-ice age until hearing the connection from the media. After she decides that, yes, "We didn’t mention anything about the weather change, but I would have to agree that possibly you can expect it [a mini ice age]." He determines that a) Zharkova doesn't know what she believes and b) even if she did, her peer-reviewed literature is inferior to his own and she obviously doesn't what she's talking about. Mr. Brown then concludes by declaring there will be no mini-ice age, without any proof, drawing from the weasly "More recent studies, including those by Lean, find the solar irradiance varies less than was thought in 1997."
- starbeast 8y ago
  >So the author of the article is upset that the astronomer in question never thought about the correlation between reduced solar activity and a mini-ice age until hearing the connection from the media. After she decides that, yes, "We didn’t mention anything about the weather change, but I would have to agree that possibly you can expect it [a mini ice age]." He determines that a) Zharkova doesn't know what she believes and b) even if she did, her peer-reviewed literature is inferior to his own and she obviously doesn't what she's talking about. If a mathematician and astrophysicist pushing their theory about the inner working of the sun has only just thought about potential impacts on climatology due to sudden media excitement, then they have probably just skimmed it compared to actual climatologists. There is already existing research into the effects of a grand minimum on climate change, is not as though climatologists aren't going to think to look into that. Here's a paper from 2010; "On the effect of a new grand minimum of solar activity on the future climate on Earth" http://www.pik-potsdam.de/%7Estefan/Publications/Journals/feulner_rahmstorf_2010.pdf http://www.pik-potsdam.de/%7Estefan/Publications/Journals/fe... Here's the summary - "In summary, global mean temperatures in the year 2100 would most likely be diminished by about 0.1°C. Even taking into account all uncertainties in the temperature re-construction, the forcings, and the model physics, the overall uncertainty is estimated to be at most a factor of 3, so the offset should not be larger than 0.3°C. Comparing this to the 3.7°C and 4.5°C temperature rise relative to 1961 1990 until the end of the century under the IPCC A1B and A2 emission scenarios, respectively, a new Maunder type solar activity minimum cannot offset the global warming caused by human greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, any offset of global warming due to a grand minimum of solar activity would be merely a temporary effect, since the distinct solar minima during the last millennium typically lasted for only several decades or a century at most." Also, the scientist in question says that at best, "the Sun buys us time to stop these carbon emissions", so she is still worrying about the climate getting hotter.
- Retric 8y ago
  Look anyone that thinks their is a linear relationship between steady state temperate and heating has no idea what they are talking about. “A 2015 study looked at a 2 watts per square meter decrease causing a 0.13-degree celsius effect. A four times larger effect would be 0.5-degree celsius.” Black body radiation for example is t^4 on the Kelvin scale. Which is why Mars sees temperatures as high as 20C even though it gets 590 watts per square metre vs 1,361 watts per square metre for Earth. Note our moons are a better direct comparison as they don’t have any atmosphere.

opendomain 8y ago

So - this is predicting cooler weather by 0.5 degrees Celsius that could last up to 40 years? This is not climate change ' this is due solar activity being out of alignment with the earth. However, this may cause people to believe global warming may not vve caused by humans.

api 8y ago
It would mitigate anthropogenic warming until the sun wakes back up, then wham-o and bye bye Miami.
isoprophlex 8y ago
And if we keep increasing CO2 concentration, a perfect shitstorm 40 years later once the effect wears off...
guscost 8y ago
How is this not climate change? It's a (predicted) change in the climate.
- onion2k 8y ago
  When people say 'climate change' they mean 'man-made climate change' in the context of any normal discussion. That should be obvious.
  - monochromatic 8y ago
    When people mean that, they should say anthropogenic.
- abootstrapper 8y ago
  Because when people talk about “climate change” they’re mostly referring to the change in the climate due to the increase in carbon emissions due to human activity.
  - guscost 8y ago

k_ 8y ago

I'm worrying; could it hide the effects of global warming? (or whatever name is used now) I'm afraid this could result in even less support from the governments and/or less effort to reduce emissions and other climate-changing actions. Which could be disastrous at the end of the ~ 40 years...

onion2k 8y ago
More optimistically, this could buy us a ~40 year stay of execution that'll be very useful in actually fixing the problems.
- k_ 8y ago
  I like this point of view :) Sadly, I'm having trouble believing in it, but I would love being wrong on that.
- hyperbovine 8y ago
  And what, pray tell, gives you cause to believe that we would spend those 40 years productively addressing said problems? Because all available evidence seems to point to the contrary.
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    People already are doing the work. I’m doing the work. We need time.
  - sgt101 8y ago
    I'm with you, but to be fair there are compelling reasons to ditch fossil fuels without global warming... poison smog, geopolitics, less good motors (as in not a powerful and not as reliable), noise...
  - onion2k 8y ago
    And what, pray tell, gives you cause to believe that we would spend those 40 years productively addressing said problems? I live in an apartment with a view over a port that maintains the ships that build offshore wind farms. They've been getting busier and busier over the past decade. I literally see people working on (a small part of) the solution every day.

duckqlz 8y ago

We had all better do our part and emit as much carbon as possible to avoid the incoming solar winter!

abominator 8y ago

Christ. Those social icons and reaction smiley faces are repellent. And a completely unrelated video set to autoplay, right in the middle of the article. This site is an abomination.

slowmovintarget 8y ago
That's the reason to run adblockers... You may not be able to if you're on mobile. Much of the web is horrifically bad without ad blocking these days.

olivermarks 8y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum#Little_Ice_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum#Little_Ice_Age The last Maunder Minimum was between 1645 to 1715 but there is no agreement (as usual) on whether it was a major contributor to the 'mini ice age' that occurred at the same time and had a big impact on food supplies. Interesting that Annie Maunder was not recognized at the time due to lack of formal education qualifications. Two papers were published in Edward Maunder's name in 1890[4] and 1894,[5] and he cited earlier papers written by Gustav Spörer.[6] Because Annie Maunder had not received a university degree, due to restrictions at the time, her contribution was not then publicly recognized.[7]

ChuckMcM 8y ago

The lack of Solar variability in the IPCC models is a "known issue"[1] which is, in my opinion, an under stated position as the bulk of the heat/energy in the Earth's system comes from the Sun. That said, the science around it is pretty interesting. Whether or not it puts the Earth into a cooling trend it is affecting the propagation of radio waves around the planet and as an amateur radio operator, having a 'quiet' Sun creates a pretty unique opportunity for operating in a previously unexplored solar regime. [1] More research to investigate the effects of solar behaviour on climate is needed before the magnitude of solar effects on climate can be stated with certainty. -- IPCC 2007 Working Group (https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch1s1-4-3.html https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch1s1-4...)

ben_w 8y ago
Out of curiosity, I just looked up solar variations. Wikipedia says the average (over a year) solar irradiance goes from 1365.5 /m^2 to 1366.5 W/m^2, which is larger than the estimate in your link. By comparison, the estimated net effect of anthropogenic temperature forcing is 1.5 W/m^2. Yes, this is relevant and should be in models. However, I would be shocked if they have made no effort to include it. It’s a cycle with straightforward values, thinking they’re ignoring it completely is like thinking Apple has made an iPhone app and forgotten to test it on an iPad for 40 years. Indeed, most of your link appears to be the science version of “we tested it on every combination of device we can, but we’d like some budget to go on eBay and get an original iPad running iOS 3”.

ohiovr 8y ago

This will cause the oceans to absorb a lot of CO2 from the atmosphere due to increased solubility of the lower temperature ocean water.