OMG... Not... global... COOLING! snic, snic

On 7/16/2015 10:38 PM, Bruce Hoult wrote:
On Tuesday, July 14, 2015 at 9:50:38 AM UTC+12, Martin Gregorie wrote:
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.
The theorized mechanism is fewer sunspots - less solar wind - more cosmic rays reaching earth - more nucleation of aerosols - more clouds - higher reflectivity - more energy radiation into space - lower temperatures.

The key link in this chain (more cosmic rays - more nucleation of aerosols) has been experimentally verified at CERN.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrik_...imat e_change

IPCC reports state that cloud reflectivity and proportion of cloud cover is one of the most important and yet least understood aspects of the global climate system.

--
Dan Marotta