h/t Benny Peiser – the UK MET office has published a study which suggests solar activity is currently plummeting, the fastest rate of decline in 9300 years. The study also raises the odds of Maunder Minimum style conditions by 2050 from 8% to 15 – 20%.

Regional climate impacts of a possible future grand solar minimum

The abstract of the study;

The past few decades have been characterized by a period of relatively high solar activity. However, the recent prolonged solar minimum and subsequent weak solar cycle 24 have led to suggestions that the grand solar maximum may be at an end. Using past variations of solar activity measured by cosmogenic isotope abundance changes, analogue forecasts for possible future solar output have been calculated. An 8% chance of a return to Maunder Minimum-like conditions within the next 40 years was estimated in 2010 (ref. 2). The decline in solar activity has continued, to the time of writing, and is faster than any other such decline in the 9,300 years covered by the cosmogenic isotope data1. If this recent rate of decline is added to the analysis, the 8% probability estimate is now raised to between 15 and 20%.

Read more: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150623/ncomms8535/full/ncomms8535.html

Naturally the MET thinks that anthropogenic forcing will overwhelm the cooling effect. In the context of farcical model predictions of anthropogenic warming of up to +6.6c by 2100, which the MET still officially treats as serious science, a degree or so of cooling, due to a lull in solar activity, might not seem a big deal.

Nevertheless, the fact the MET have raised the risk of significant global cooling from their 8% estimate, produced in 2010, to 15 – 20% is intriguing. The MET assures us however, that any reprieve from global warming will be temporary – potentially leaving open the option of running global warming scares, in the midst of brutal little ice age style winters.

Perhaps the science is not as settled, as some politicians have been led to believe.

Climategate Email 0700.txt

… Communications between scientists and politicians are becoming more and more important and the scientific population must be large enough to be visible. D Raynaud commented that the work by Stocker in 1997 on the gross rate of emissions and the change in thermo circulation is important to conferences such as Kyoto. K Hutter added that politicians accused scientists of a high signal to noise ratio; scientists must make sure that they come up with stronger signals. The time-frame for science and politics is very different; politicians need instant information, but scientific results take a long time A Ghazi pointed out that the funding is set once the politicians want the research to be done. We need to make them understand that we do not understand the climate system. …

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