A Winter Tale of Snow to Remember and Sun Long Ago

Photo by David Haggith

I wrote months ago about the coming mini ice age. Recently the reality of this cooling trend became mainstream news because of a new scientific study affirming it, and even more recently, the midwest decided to remind us of what mini ice ages might feel like.

The reason for all of this is told here:

The sun is entering one of the deepest Solar Minima of the Space Age. Sunspots have been absent for most of 2018, and the sun’s ultraviolet output has sharply dropped. New research shows that Earth’s upper atmosphere is responding. “We see a cooling trend,” says Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center. “High above Earth’s surface, near the edge of space, our atmosphere is losing heat energy. If current trends continue, it could soon set a Space Age record for cold…. “The thermosphere always cools off during Solar Minimum.” It’s one of the most important ways the solar cycle affects our planet. As 2018 comes to an end, the Thermosphere Climate Index is on the verge of setting a Space Age record for Cold. “We’re not there quite yet,” says Mlynczak, “but it could happen in a matter of months.”

Space Weather Archive


That story was repeated and elaborated upon by The Sun in the UK in an article titled “DEEP FREEZE Long cold winter could hit space in months bringing record low temperatures,” which predicted the events that have just happened in the midwest and the UK:

A long cold winter could hit space in months bringing record low temperatures, NASA has warned. That’s the warning from a scientist who fears sunspot activity on the surface of our star has dropped so low that record low temperatures could soon set in.

The Sun

From there, the article proliferated on the Drudge Report and many other news sites. Then, this fact-checker said the story was just more fake news:

This fact-checker got several news outlets to correct a false story about a mini-Ice Age. The story warned of “long cold winter” that could bring record-low temperatures to Earth over the next few months…. Despite appearing in Fox News, two daily newspapers in the United Kingdom and at least 12 local radio shows, the claim is false — and its origin is a classic case of what Emmanuel Vincent likes to think of as media telephone.

Poynter

Tell that to the City of Chicago and the upper midwest. Tell it to the UK. The story as it was originally told seems prescient now. It looks now like cooling of the upper atmosphere can create cooling down below. It is, at least, a plausible explanation for the repeated polar vortices in the last few years. It is quite possible that greenhouse gases are trapping in heat at the same time the sun is reducing its radiation and that the sun may be winning that battle for the time being.

Most of us recognized from our own experience that the earth felt like it was getting warmer in the seventies and eighties and nineties, and we could see that glaciers were retreating rapidly. Now many of us feel by our same experience that the earth is actually cooling. We have had a repeated harsh winters of late with each one feeling more severe than the one before.

As I write now, the edge of the polar vortex has made its way to the Pacific Northwest, and snow is blowing sideways across the fields from the north. The wind is howling around the house and knocked the power out so that we were running on generator. That’s not unusual for the mountain region where I live, but for the last three years winters have brought record snowfalls to parts of the Cascades.

So, what is normal? Can the earth be cooling when there are clearly more greenhouse gases now than back in the 1700s?

It is cooling because the sun is going into a mini ice age event called a solar minimum in which the sun stops emitting solar flares, which means it stops bathing the earth’s outer atmosphere in as much ejected radiation (and the heat that goes along with that).

The last time the sun settled into one of these reduced-activity cycles was back in the late 1600s and 1700s. Benjamin Franklin was visiting France in those days, and the United States of America did not exist. That the earth was cooler in those decades of reduced solar flares is born out by numerous writings that talked about how the Thames would freeze over and other great winter-storm events. It is also recorded in trapped atmosphere in which trace particles indicate a cooler climate at that time.

Read more at thegreatrecession.info

Trackback from your site.

Comments (2)

  • Avatar

    Joseph Olson

    |

    “Journey to the Western Sea” by David Lauender

    History of the epic 1803 Lewis and Clark Expedition, from St Louis to Portland, Oregon across uncharted wilderness during the final decade of the Little Ice Age. These courageous explorers documented terrain, vegetation, native tribes and brutal weather conditions. Safety was due in part to an Italian air rifle, the 0.46 GIRANDONI, 20 shot repeater used by the Swiss to prevent Napoleon invasion, on exhibit at the NRA Museum

    Beeman (dot) net has great review

    Reply

  • Avatar

    Robert Graham

    |

    GreatRecession, when you write, “there are clearly more greenhouse gases now than back in the 1700s”, brings you into the realm of “luke warmer”. Greenhouse gases and humans have no control over the climate of the Earth. Look under the publication tab on this site where papers by Joe Postma, Nasif Nahle to name two puts that “baby to bed”
    To discover, why there are lack of sunspots and solar flares being produced by the Sun, may I introduce you to Valentina Zharkova, https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.04482.pdf and planetary mechanics, https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1005/1005.5303.pdf .

    Reply

Leave a comment

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.
Share via