http://www.britsattheirbest.com/001645.php

The Canadian Space Agency’s radio telescope has been reporting Flux Density Values so low they will mean a mini ice age if they continue.

Like the number of sunspots, the Flux Density Values reflect the Sun’s magnetic activity, which affects the rate at which the Sun radiates energy and warmth. CSA project director Ken Tapping calls the radio telescope that supplies NASA and the rest of the world with daily values of the Sun’s magnetic activity a “stethoscope on the Sun”. In this case, however, it is the “doctor” whose health is directly affected by the readings.

This is because when the magnetic activity is low, the Sun is dimmer, and puts out less radiant warmth. If the Sun goes into dim mode, as it has in the past, the Earth gets much colder.

Tapping, who was originally from Kent, says that “Typically as you go through the ten or eleven year solar activity cycle you see the numbers go up or down. The lowest number is 64 or 68. The numbers 71 or 72 are very low, but they usually start to go up. We are at the end of a cycle, but the numbers still haven’t gone up. We have been joking around coffee that we may be seeing the Sun about to shut down.” (To date Tapping has been far more concerned about global warming.)



According to NASA, “early, well-documented records indicate that the Sun went through a period of inactivity in the late 17th century" from about 1645 to 1715, during the Maunder Minimum.



“This period of solar inactivity also corresponds to a climatic period called the Little Ice Age when rivers that are normally ice-free froze and snow fields remained year-round at lower altitudes.” It was called the Maunder Minimum, after Edward Maunder, a British accountant who saw a sunspot “like a tack in the Sun” while he was walking home, and subsequently made counting and analyzing sunspots, rather than money, his life’s work. There have been other Minimums. The Dalton Minimum of 1800 to 1810 was that period when Napoleon had his unfortunate encounter with the Russian winter.

If the Sun’s magnetic activity does not increase, and it goes dim for an extended period, it will get quite chilly. In the meantime the Canada Space Agency, the Royal Observatory Greenwich and the US Air Force Solar Optical Observing Network are all keeping an eye on the Sun.

I Rei-
I watched a pretty decent science channel documentary on glacial melting, and the manner in which loss of reflecting ice leads to increasing warming and more melting of reflecting ice so that the climactic system regenerates. They didn't get to the point of discussing the progressive decomposition of methane rich sediments, which is inevitable after warming of the sea  beds past methane hydrate's critical temperature.

It was a good presentation, They calculated the amount of sea rise as 20 feet, except for one geologist who clambered up a hill and pointed to corals that had grown on the hilltop when the water was closer to forty or so feet deeper. The rate of change seems historically be extremely rapid - a matter of a couple decades - say by 2050 we'll all need swim fins and wet suits to go to town.

Paleoclimatologists seem to think that we'll increase the mean temperature by 20 degrees or so, taking us back to the age of dinosaurs, an turning the world back into a swamp. The equatorial region will turn into a desert and the poles will be the new gardens of the world. There are a few advantages, or disadvantages, depending on one's politics - New York City will  vanish, along with most of southern Florida, lots of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and major hunks of the los Angeles area, so that the sea will rise to fall over California - sort of what Cayce suggested when he said California would fall into the sea - same thing inverted. Totally fascinating.

It would appear that we have all succumbed to that old Chinese curse, "May you live in exciting times."

One thing that seems evident is that we'd do well to sell off our seaside resort investments and look to regions now 100 to 200 feet higher for our cabanas and deck chairs. Since Siberia is going to become prime real estate we might consider learning Russian too.

The idea of global cooling due to the sunspot minima is certainly valid, but not very great. http://solar.physics.montana.edu/REU/2007/sjoy/graphs.html has some graphs that suggest changes of a degree max. I think that the changes due to regenerative melting offer a far more significant problem.

dave

REI,

There will be a new ice age for Europe due to the redirection of the gulf stream into Continental Africa, due to global warming.

Europe no longer warmed by the gulf stream will freeze. As for the rest of the world my reading indicates this is an event for the distant future.

alan

Quote:

Will This Be In Full Effect Around 2012

NO.

ALAN