Regular Blogs about: The threat to democracy, the Judeo-Christian tradition. Also research about International Communism & possible impact of Grand Solar Minimum

Blog – posted September 08. 2024:

BACKGROUND ABOUT GRAND SOLAR MINIMA

One of the themes of my blogs will be concerns about the current Grand Solar Minimum. However, most people are not aware of the background science behind this so this blog is a brief overview of the Research about Grand Solar Minima.

DECREASING SUNSPOTS & CONFLICTING VIEWS ABOUT GRAND SOLAR MINIMA –

 I will give a quick overview of: the forecast of future sunspots by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration -NOAA, & conflicting views about Grand Solar Minima.

The sun is immense in both size and power. Constant nuclear fusion creates radiant light & heat. It has layers of magnetic fields with overlapping torques. Small dark spots observed on the surface of the Sun are called Sunspots, they are the entry or exit points of magnetic arcs. Their number reflects the activity of the Sun. The least number of sunspots are observed in a Solar Minimum & the most in a Solar Maximum. These occur in a regular 22 year cycle. Every 400-500 years there is a reduction in the radiant power of the sun for a few decades, this is called a Grand Solar Minimum. In the late 1600s – this resulted in many of the rivers & canals of Northern Europe to freeze over – it was called the Maunder Minimum. It is generally accepted that we are now entering a Grand Solar Minimum. NOAA publishes forecasts of the number of sunspots – they will become low in number in the 2020s and then gradually decrease to zero by July 2040.¹

In  2015 Nils-Axel Morner, the former head of Paleo-geophysics & Geodynamics at Stockholm University, published a paper about Grand Solar Minima. In the Abstract he wrote:

“By about 2030-2040, the Sun will experience a new grand solar minimum. This is evident from multiple studies of quite different characteristics, the phasing of sunspot cycles, the cyclic observations on North Atlantic behaviour over the past millennium, the cyclic pattern of cosmogenic radionuclides in natural terrestrial archives, the motions of the Sun with respect to the centre of mass, the planetary spin-orbit coupling, the planetary conjunction history and the general planetary solar terrestrial interaction. During the previous grand solar minima – i.e. the Sporer Minimum (ca 1440-1460, The Maunder Minimum (ca 1687-1703) and the Dalton  Minimum (ca 1809-1821) – the climatic conditions deteriorated into Little Ice Age periods.” ²

Prior to 2011 NASA emphasized, on their website, the importance of the Sun in relation to our climate and that we will experience cooler weather during the new Grand Solar Minimum:      “The Sun is the primary forcing of Earth’s climate system. Sunlight warms our world; sunlight drives atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns…the Sun drives almost every aspect of our world’s climate system and makes possible life as we know it…our world should be just beginning to enter a new period of cooling, perhaps a new ice age. However, a new force for change has arisen, humans…Other important forcings of Earth’s climate system include such ‘variables’ as clouds, airborne particulate matter, and surface brightness, each of these varying features of Earth’s environment has the capacity to exceed the warming influence of greenhouse gases and cause our world to cool”  ³

However, in 2019 NASA posted, on their website, a different view of the Sun’s role in affecting the Earth’s climate and of the minimal effects of Grand Solar Minima:                                                           “According to the UNs IPCC  the current consensus is that long & short term variations in solar activity play only a very small role in Earth’s climate. Warming from increased levels of human produced greenhouse gases is actually many times stronger than any effects due to recent variations in solar activity…Some people have linked the Maunder Minimum’s temporary cooling effect to decreased solar activity, but that change was more likely influenced by increased volcanic activity and ocean circulation shifts. Moreover, even a prolonged ‘Grand Solar Minimum’ or ‘Maunder Minimum’ would only briefly and minimally offset human-caused warming.” ⁴

                In 2019 Russian Scientists published data from tree rings which clearly demonstrate significant cooling events have occurred during previous episodes of Grand Solar Minima: 

“To investigate the possible Sun-climate connection the regional tree-ring chronology covering the period 1445-2005 was analysed. A total of 36 timber cores of pine Pinus sylvestris  L. were sampled…the data were processed using modern methods…the analysis revealed significant cooling events, coinciding with the Spoerer (1400-1340), Maunder (1645-1715), Dalton (1790-1830), and Gleissberg (1880-1910) Grand Solar Minima…” ⁵

                Grand Solar Minima (GSM) also affects our climate by causing increased cloud cover, increased Volcanic activity and flooding:

“Cosmic rays are highly energetic atomic nuclei or other particles (e.g. protons) travelling through space at a speed approaching that of light…. When cosmic rays enter Earth’s atmosphere, they disintegrate in a cascade into subatomic particles which act as cloud condensation nuclei by ionization and thus instigate low level cloud formation… In 1997 Henrik Svensmark & Eigil Friis-Christensen, [at the Danish Space Research Institute], popularised a theory that linked galactic cosmic rays and global climate change mediated primarily by variations of the intensity of the solar wind [positive ions and electrons, 95%of which are from Hydrogen atoms – emitted from the sun – creating a magnetic field] …Variations in the Sun’s activity alter the influx of cosmic rays to the earth. When the Sun is lazy, magnetically speaking, there are more cosmic rays, more low clouds, and the world is cooler. When the Sun is active fewer cosmic rays reach the Earth with fewer low clouds and the world warms up.”

The effects of GSM on volcanic activity has been summarised by Sasha Dobler:

“As a further complication of GSM, cosmic rays that make it to Earth and enter the surface, can trigger earthquakes and volcanoes and other tectonic anomalies. The penetrating particles (cosmic ray muons) from space decrease the viscosity of silica-rich magma. As a consequence of these eruptions, increased amounts of volcanic  aerosols and gases can generate global dimming and further cloud nucleation, leading to more cooling and crop failure, another feedback mechanism.”

The mechanism whereby GSM causes floods is summarised by David DuByne:

“In a GSM, cosmic ray added cloud layers trigger larger flash floods, hailstorms and due to jet stream disturbances with mixing of atmospheric layers, local long-duration precipitation events (atmospheric compression events) resulting in the ‘once in a 200 year flood’ you are seeing planet wide in 2019.” ⁶

Valentina Zharkova, a Ukrainian Astrophysicist based at Northumbria University in the UK, has formulated a mathematical model of the Sun’s activity related to its magnetic fields. This predicts that we have entered a Grand Solar Minimum, the potential impact of which, she described in an editorial in 2020, from which 3 paragraphs are quoted below:

“In this editorial I will demonstrate with newly discovered solar activity proxy-magnetic field that the Sun has entered into the modern Grand Solar Minimum (2020-2053) that will lead to a significant reduction of solar magnetic field and activity like during the Maunder minimum leading to noticeable reduction of terrestrial temperature…

“However, not only solar radiation was changed during Maunder minimum… A significant reduction of the solar magnetic field during grand solar minima will undoubtedly lead to the increase of intensity of galactic and extra-galactic cosmic rays which, in turn, lead to a formation of high clouds in the terrestrial atmospheres and assist to atmospheric cooling as shown by Svensmark.⁷The reduction of a terrestrial temperature during the next 30 years can have important implications for different parts of the planet on growing vegetation, agriculture, food supplies, and heating needs in both Northern and Southern hemispheres. This global cooling …would require inter-government efforts to tackle problems with heat and food supplies for the whole population of the Earth.”  ⁸

 1 Predicted Sunspots on NOAA website  https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/predicted-sunspot-number-and-radio-flux

2 Morner, N-A (2015) The Approaching new Grand Solar Minimum and Little Ice Age climate conditionsNatural Science, 7, 510-518. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ns.2015.711052

3 David DuByne, Bill & Richard Porter called Climate Revolution: the Grand Solar Minimum pages 14-15.

4 NASA Science Editorial Team( Sept 06, 2019)  What is the Sun’s role in Climate Change? https://science.nasa.gov/earth/climate-change/what-is-the-suns-role-in-climate-change/

5 Kasatking E.A., Shumilov O.I., Timonen (2019) Solar activity imprinted in tree-ring data from Northwestern Russia. Journal of Atmospheric & Solar-Terrestrial Physics, Volume 193, 15 October 2019 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364682618306825

6 David DuByne, Bill & Richard Porter called Climate Revolution: the Grand Solar Minimum pages 79-86 .

7  Svensmark et al (2017) Increased ionization supports growth of aerosols into cloud condensation nuclei. Nature Communications. 2017;8:2199 Increased ionization supports growth of aerosols into cloud condensation nuclei | Nature Communications

8 Valentina Zharkova (2020) Editorial: Modern Grand Solar Minimum will lead to terrestrial cooling. Temperature, Volume 7, Issue 3, 2020. http://doi.org/10.1080/23328940.2020.1796243