Global Cooling Coming? Archibald uses solar and surface data to predict 4.9°C fall (!)

JoNova ^ | January 26th, 2012 | Joanne

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Global Cooling Coming? Archibald uses solar and surface data to predict 4.9°C fall (!)

David Archibald, polymath, makes a bold prediction that temperatures are about to dive sharply (in the decadal sense). He took the  forgotten correlation that as solar cycles lengthen and weaken, the world gets cooler. He refined it into a predictive tool, tested it and published in 2007. His paper has been expanded on recently by Prof Solheim in Norway, who predicts a 1.5°C drop in Central Norway over the next ten years.

Our knowledge of they solar dynamo is improving, and David adds the predicted solar activity ’til 2040 to the analysis. Normal solar cycles are 11 years long, but the current one (cycle 24) is shaping up to be 17 years (unusually long), and using historical data from the US, David predicts  a 2.1°C decline over Solar Cycle 24 followed by a further 2.8°C over Solar Cycle 25. That adds up to a whopping 4.9°C fall in temperate latitudes over the next 20 years. We can only hope he’s wrong. As David says ” The center of the Corn Belt, now in Iowa, will move south to Kansas.”

He also predicts continuing drought in Africa for another 14 years, with droughts likely in South America too.

If he’s right, it’s awful and excellent at the same time. Cold hurts, but wouldn’t it be something if we understood our climate well enough to plan ahead?

See his post below for all the details…

-  Jo

[redhead]

I spent 15 years in southern MN, and I can vouch for that. Minnesota weather is deranged. It was frequently over 100 F in the summer, and winters were bitter, dropping to -40 F and staying there for long periods. When I had the opportunity to move back to Alaska from there, I did it in a heartbeat. At least, up here, the gradients aren’t so steep. Alaska is so big that we have several climate zones, so we can more or less make a choice. Rainy and cool? Panhandle or Aleutians. Hot in the summer, cold in the winter? Fairbanks, hands down. The south coast is a nice place, cold snaps in the winter, but mostly tolerable, with warm sunny summers as a rule. (But, I could still like a little bit more “warm” in the summer... :o) )