I didn’t think that I would be using the Joes snowforecast page until November at the earliest but there have been a number of posts and shares concerning a news story that appeared a few days ago regarding sunspot activity and that it would mean possibly cold winters (as if the last 2 haven’t been cold) beginning in 2020.
This is the piece from the Daily Mail about which among other things claims that temperatures will plummet and that the Thames river will freeze the way it did during the time of Dickens about 172 years ago (give or take a few).
This story generated a lot of interest and lots of questions regarding whether it is true or not. Honestly I can’t even focus on tomorrow or the next day let alone 6 winters or so from now! So let us sit back for a moment and contemplate just exactly what this piece is saying.
The new model of the Sun’s solar cycle is producing unprecedentedly accurate predictions of irregularities within the Sun’s 11-year heartbeat.
It draws on dynamo effects in two layers of the Sun, one close to the surface and one deep within its convection zone.
Predictions from the model suggest that solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s to conditions last seen during the ‘mini ice age’ that began in 1645, according to the results presented by Prof Valentina Zharkova at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno.
The model predicts that the pair of waves become increasingly offset during Cycle 25, which peaks in 2022.
During Cycle 26, which covers the decade from 2030-2040, the two waves will become exactly out of synch and this will cause a significant reduction in solar activity.
‘In cycle 26, the two waves exactly mirror each other – peaking at the same time but in opposite hemispheres of the Sun,’ said Zharkova.
Okay first off…im not understanding any of this since sunspots are not my thing. Apparently the correlation is between the last time this happened (1645). I wonder if they put the watches up early back then? Now here is today’s piece from the Washington Post that puts this in a bit of perspective.
When you read through both pieces you get what is really the same bullshit in both directions which basically says “I don’t know”. Both the Washington Post piece and the Slate Piece i found on this point out that by the time we get to 2030 we would have pumped so much more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere that it will offset any cooling if it should occur!
So in the end what you have is a he says she says piece (literally) laced with the usual predictable politics we have come to expect these days when it comes to anything regarding the climate. Anything the points to an extreme either on the baking or the freezing side is met with headlines and stories that are ambiguous at best and lead to the same predictable responses. Frankly I’m tired of it and bored of it. There is really nothing here in either direction other than it gives people excuses to fan their politics. I for one suggest to all of you to just not pay attention to any of this shit. In 2030 I will be 71 years old and hopefully still at this. I understand the fascination about all this but there is so much we don’t understand about climate change, what it is, what it isn’t let alone what it will be. Always read these stories with a huge grain of salt (provided it doesn’t screw up your blood pressure).
With regards to the winter of 2015/2016 since last winter tore up my pool cover among other things, Im thinking that I don’t necessarily want a repeat performance. As to a forecast, until we start to get the Siberian snowcover ball rolling in about 2 months I really have no clue.