2007+: Global cooling Dr. Kenneth Tapping is worried about the sun. Solar activity comes in regular cycles, but the latest one is refusing to start. Sunspots have all but vanished, and activity is suspiciously quiet. The last time this happened was 400 years ago -- and it signaled a solar event known as a "Maunder Minimum," along with the start of what we now call the "Little Ice Age."Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, says it may be happening again. Overseeing a giant radio telescope he calls a "stethoscope for the sun," Tapping says, if the pattern doesn't change quickly, the earth is in for some very chilly weather. [ICSC 2/9/08] Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on. No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously. [DailyTech 2/27/2008] IPCC computer predictions of warming versus real-world temperature data (blue and green lines): Arctic ice extent was 30 per cent greater on August 11, 2008 than it was on the August 12, 2007: Recent satellite observations from the Arctic indicate that spring ice melting is beginning at a lower rate than normal this year. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the area of ice-covered ocean has decreased only about 750,000 km2 from its peak value at the end of February, compared to a normal decline of 1.1 million km2 by late April. If this trend continues, the annual ice melt in 2009 may be less than in recent years, and the late summer Arctic ice extent may rebound from its well-publicized downtrend. [stormx 4/22/2009] [A] 20-member contingent [of scientists] from Canada, the U.S., Germany, and Italy - spent one month exploring the North Pole as well as never-before measured regions of the Arctic. Among their findings: Rather than finding newly formed ice to be two metres thick, "we measured ice thickness up to four metres," stated a spokesperson for the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research of the Helmholtz Association, Germany's largest scientific organization. [National Post 5/4/09] In 2008-2009 the ice melt across during the Antarctic summer (October-January) was the lowest ever recorded in the satellite history: The Global sea level rise has flattened considerably since mid-2005: Rise of sea levels is 'the greatest lie ever told'. The period between about 1645 and 1715 was particularly cold and coincides with the Maunder Minimum, where only about 50 sunspots appeared, compared to an expectation of from 40,000 to 50,000. [New American] [In 2008 the Sun] hit a 50-year low in solar wind pressure, a 55-year low in radio emissions, and a 100-year low in sunspot activity. [BBC] Realtime sun image



Click for full size. New measurements from a NASA satellite show a dramatic cooling in the upper atmosphere that correlates with the declining phase of the current solar cycle. For the first time, researchers can show a timely link between the Sun and the climate of Earth's thermosphere, the region above 100 km, an essential step in making accurate predictions of climate change in the high atmosphere. [PRNewswire]