On Mon, 13 Jul 2015 14:09:42 -0700, David Hirst wrote:

A huge reduction in solar output is predicted to occur by then.

Thankfully, they mean sunspot activity, not heat output, though the lack
of sunspots will likely cause some noticeable weather changes.
(http://www.space.com/19280-solar-act...h-climate.html)

There may well be a connection: the Maunder Minimum, when there were very
few sunspots from 1645 to about 1715, coincided with the middle part of
the Little Ice Age (1350 to about 1850), during which Europe and North
America experienced very cold winters. However, as AFAIK there was no
good understanding of either IR or UV radiation during the Maunder
Minimum nor any reliable means of measuring the amount of solar energy
reaching the Earth, any association between the two events is at best
supposition, but should it happen again we are now well enough
instrumented to discover what, if any, mechanism connects the two.

If things do get worse, then hopefully by 2030 we'll have got better at
scratching around in weak conditions, so we'll be sorted.

Could be a problem if reduced solar energy stabilises the atmosphere. But
that seems unlikely, simply because I've never seen any reports of a
large drop in the population of raptors and other land-based soaring
birds during the Maunder Minimum. If soaring had gotten difficult then,
I'd have expected it to have affected birds that find food by soaring.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |