A very strange Warmist wriggle



The fact that low solar activity has long been associated with colder weather in both Europe and the USA is finally getting a grudging admission from Warmists. But, as with their "explanation" of the Medieval warm period as being "local", they are now saying that solar effects are local too!

It's hard to believe but the paper below actually argues that a quiet sun makes it particularly cold in England only! Though some "leakage" to nearby Europe is apparently allowed. The fact that unusually cold weather in England is closely correlated with unusually cold weather across the entire Eurasian continent is blithely ignored.

But Mike Lockwood, leading author of the paper below, is an old Warmist from way back so neither logic nor honesty is to be expected of him. He once also claimed that variations in solar output drove earth's climate -- but only up to 20 years ago! See the first two sentences in "Recent oppositely directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature". Making bizarre exceptions to general rules seems to be his modus operandi -- JR
Are cold winters in Europe associated with low solar activity?

By M Lockwood et al.

Solar activity during the current sunspot minimum has fallen to levels unknown since the start of the 20th century. The Maunder minimum (about 1650–1700) was a prolonged episode of low solar activity which coincided with more severe winters in the United Kingdom and continental Europe. Motivated by recent relatively cold winters in the UK, we investigate the possible connection with solar activity. We identify regionally anomalous cold winters by detrending the Central England temperature (CET) record using reconstructions of the northern hemisphere mean temperature. We show that cold winter excursions from the hemispheric trend occur more commonly in the UK during low solar activity, consistent with the solar influence on the occurrence of persistent blocking events in the eastern Atlantic. We stress that this is a regional and seasonal effect relating to European winters and not a global effect. Average solar activity has declined rapidly since 1985 and cosmogenic isotopes suggest an 8% chance of a return to Maunder minimum conditions within the next 50 years (Lockwood 2010 Proc. R. Soc. A 466 303–29): the results presented here indicate that, despite hemispheric warming, the UK and Europe could experience more cold winters than during recent decades.

Environmental Research Letters Issue 2 (April-June 2010)


Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

1 comment:

  1. Well, at least they acknowledge that there was a Maunder minimum and that the sun does play a role in temperatures.

    How did they come up the idea that there is only "an 8% chance of a return to Maunder minimum conditions within the next 50 years"? Maybe only 8% of the sun's radiation falls outside of the UK?

    ReplyDelete

All comments containing Chinese characters will not be published as I do not understand them