Mini ice age in 15 years? 3 reasons not to worry

The link between large volcanic explosions and this and some other cooling episodes have been known for awhile. If these scientists did not know about it, they are at best negligent. If they knew and did not take it into account in their "calculations", they are dishonest.

We have already been in the part of several natural climate cycles that usually cause global cooling, but the earth has continued to warm, resulting in record heat.

Isn't it convenient that this claim is made when a majority of people are starting to recognize global warming. Will we find out that these are more of the scientists being paid by the fossil fuel industry to encourage denialism?

http://www.ajc.com/news/weather/mini-ice-age-15-years-3-reasons-not-worry/nmyrc/

July 14, 2015

If you weren’t concerned over recent news that Earth may be heading into a mini ice age as soon as 2030, you aren’t alone.

The mini-ice-age idea came out of a report projecting a drop in solar activity by 60 percent during the 2030s, creating freezing conditions not seen since 1645.

Jim Wild, a professor of space physics at Lancaster University, says the possibility of another “Little Ice Age” like that seen in the mid-1700s is tempered by a few factors:

Volcanic activity in the mid-1700s probably affected the climate, with gas and ash reflecting solar radiation back into space, increasing the cold on Earth

Data shows the Little Ice Age in the 1700s started well before the solar fluctuations associated with the cold by today’s “mini ice age” researchers.

The cold winters in Europe during the Little Ice Age don’t appear to have been part of a global phenomenon.

Wild also says the reduced solar activiy and hypothetically colder winters might offset a few years’ worth of global warming — but not more than that.

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http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/aug/14/global-warming-solar-minimum-barely-dent

A grand solar minimum would barely make a dent in human-caused global warming

Dana Nuccitelli
Wednesday 14 August 2013

Recent articles in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten (translation available here) and in the Irish Times both ran headlines claiming that another grand solar minimum could potentially trigger an "ice age" or "mini ice age" this century. These articles actually refer to the Little Ice Age (LIA) – a period about 500 to 150 years ago when global surface temperatures were approximately 1°C colder than they are today. This is quite different from an ice age, which are more like 5°C colder than today. The LIA was not actually very cold on a global scale.

So, in order to trigger another LIA, a new grand solar minimum would have to cause about 1°C cooling, plus it would have to offset the continued human-caused global warming of 1 to 5°C by 2100, depending on how our greenhouse gas emissions change over the next century.

In the Jyllands-Posten article, Henrik Svensmark (the main scientist behind the hypothesis that the sun has a significant indirect impact on global climate via galactic cosmic rays) was a bit more measured, suggesting,

"I can imagine that it will become 0.2°C colder. I would be surprised if it became 1–2°C"

So these two articles are suggesting that a grand solar minimum could have a net cooling effect in the ballpark of 1 to 6°C, depending on how human greenhouse gas emissions change over the next century. Is it plausible that a grand solar minimum could make that happen?

The short answer is, 'No.'

We're fortunate that the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface is very stable. Climate contrarians will often ask if we'd prefer if the planet were warming or cooling, suggesting that global warming is a good thing because at least the planet isn't getting colder. This is a false dichotomy - an ideal climate is a stable one.

The relatively stable climate over the past 10,000 years has allowed establishment of human civilization, by making it possible to create large stationary agricultural farms because we could rely on stable weather patterns. During that time, net global surface temperatures changes haven't exceeded 1°C from the coldest to the hottest climates, though we're now approaching that degree of change, with 1°C warming since the LIA, 0.8°C of that over the past century, with much more to come.

What difference would a grand solar minimum make in the amount of solar energy reaching Earth? Two examples are the Maunder Minimum, a period of very low solar activity between 1645 and 1715, and the Dalton Minimum, a period of low (but not as low as the Maunder Minimum) solar activity between 1790 and 1830.

Relative to current levels, the Dalton Minimum represents a 0.08% decrease in the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface, and the Maunder Minimum represents a 0.25% decline. That's how stable solar activity is. That's also why we're playing with fire by increasing the greenhouse effect so much and so quickly. We're threatening the stability of the climate that has been so favorable to our development.

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Using this approach, Feulner & Rahmstorf (2010) (PDF available here) estimated that another solar minimum equivalent to the Dalton and Maunder minima would cause 0.09°C and 0.26°C cooling, respectively.
[See article for details on several other studies that predict the same general results.]

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The cooling effect of a grand solar minimum can also be estimated very easily without the aid of climate models, because the change in the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface is directly proportional to the temperature change it causes. Performing this calculation yields the same result as the model-based research: approximately 0.3°C cooling from another Maunder-type grand solar minimum.

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The bottom line is that the sun and the amount of solar radiation reaching Earth are very stable. Even during the Maunder and Dalton grand solar minima, global cooling was relatively small - smaller than the amount of global warming caused by human greenhouse gas emissions over the past century.

A new grand solar minimum would not trigger another LIA; in fact, the maximum 0.3°C cooling would barely make a dent in the human-caused global warming over the next century. While it would be enough to offset to about a decade's worth of human-caused warming, it's also important to bear in mind that any solar cooling would only be temporary, until the end of the solar minimum.

The science is quite clear that the human influence on climate change has become bigger than the sun's. At this point, speculation about another mini ice age is pure fantasy.