While following climate change news for the past year, I have marveled at the lack of attention given scientific specialties outside of “climate science”, despite the fact the foci of those studies could significantly impact global weather patterns.

Take, for example, heliology (the study of the Sun). A new study released by a team from the University of California San Diego has focused on our home star. It indicates that the Sun will experience a cold period where all solar activities will be reduced drastically.

A study by the University of California San Diego has claimed that by 2050, the Sun is expected to become cool. You might think “what’s the big deal,” but remember that this means the solar activities that create the heat of the Sun to sustain life on Earth may diminish. And the last time it happened was in the 17th Century, when the Thames River froze. Scientists call this the “Maunder Minimum”. Physicist Dan Lubin at the university and his team studied the past event and concluded that were are in for a worse case. The Sun is expected to get much dimmer than last time and, in scientific terms, it is a “grand minimum” — a time period in the 11-year solar cycle when the solar activities are at the lowest point. According to the study, titled Ultraviolet Flux Decrease Under a Grand Minimum from IUE Short-wavelength Observation of Solar Analogs and published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters, this grand minimum will be 7 percent cooler than such periods from the past.

For those who want a better understanding of the Maunder Minimum, please see my previous post on the Sun’s impact on Earth’s climate.

Scientists believe that “grand minimum” is triggered at irregular intervals by random fluctuations related to the Sun’s magnetic field. Their theory is based, in part, from data gathered from other stars.

…Lubin and colleagues David Tytler and Carl Melis of UC San Diego’s Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences arrived at their estimate of a grand minimum’s intensity by reviewing nearly 20 years of data gathered by the International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite mission. They compared radiation from stars that are analogous to the Sun and identified those that were experiencing minima. The reduced energy from the Sun sets into motion a sequence of events on Earth beginning with a thinning of the stratospheric ozone layer. That thinning in turn changes the temperature structure of the stratosphere, which then changes the dynamics of the lower atmosphere, especially wind and weather patterns. The cooling is not uniform. While areas of Europe chilled during the Maunder Minimum, other areas such as Alaska and southern Greenland warmed correspondingly. Lubin and other scientists predict a significant probability of a near-future grand minimum because the downward sunspot pattern in recent solar cycles resembles the run-ups to past grand minimum events.

If you like your science straight-up, the article prepared by Lubin’s team is HERE.

Another science often ignored by global warming proponents is geology, especially as it relates to plate tectonics. In that vein, another new study shows that a previously “sinking” land is actually getting bigger.

The Pacific nation of Tuvalu—long seen as a prime candidate to disappear as climate change forces up sea levels—is actually growing in size, new research shows. A University of Auckland study examined changes in the geography of Tuvalu’s nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, using aerial photographs and satellite imagery. It found eight of the atolls and almost three-quarters of the islands grew during the study period, lifting Tuvalu’s total land area by 2.9 percent, even though sea levels in the country rose at twice the global average. Co-author Paul Kench said the research, published Friday in the journal Nature Communications, challenged the assumption that low-lying island nations would be swamped as the sea rose. “We tend to think of Pacific atolls as static landforms that will simply be inundated as sea levels rise, but there is growing evidence these islands are geologically dynamic and are constantly changing,” he said.

So it appears that the only thing “settled” about science is how much good science is ignored when it fails to promote green activist dogma.



