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Zoals mijn trouwe lezers weten, hebben mijn coauteurs en ik al heel wat keren aandacht geschonken aan de zonne-hypothese als alternatief voor de AGW-hypothese (AGW = ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’). Dat wil zeggen een dominante invloed van de zon op ons klimaat in plaats van de door de mainstream van de klimatologie gestigmatiseerde boosdoener CO2 – en dan vooral die van menselijke oorspong door het verstoken van fossiele brandstoffen. Zie hier en hier.

Onder de titel, ‘Are we headed for a new solar minimum?’, verwees de bekende Amerikaansde klimatologe, Judith Curry, naar een recente publicatie van Jorge Sánchez-Sesma, die de zon een grotere rol toekent dan de mainstream.

Judit Curry:

In pondering how the climate of the 21st century will play out, solar variability has generally been dismissed as an important factor by the proponents of AGW. However, I think that it is important that scenarios of future solar variability and their potential impacts on climate should by considered in scenarios of future climate change.

I have been cursorily following the literature on this topic. I have recently been in communication with Jorge Sanchez-Sesma. He has new paper that was just accepted for publication in Earth System Dynamics, an interactive open-access journal published by the EGU [European Geosciences Union]. I am featuring this paper in a post since it provides important new analysis and insights on this topic, and also provides a useful assessment of the literature and current state of knowledge on this topic. …

Het is een uiterst technisch verhaal, dat waarschijnlijk slechts door professionals kan worden begrepen en naar waarde kan worden geschat. Ik beperk mij hier dan ook tot het commentaar van Judith Curry:

This is a remarkable paper in many ways. This paper has a single author — Jorge Sanchez-Sesma, who is a climatologist (not a solar physicist). I have been in contact with Jorge and will be posting an interview with him in several weeks. He has a remarkable story to tell.

This paper indicates that the case is increasingly compelling for millennial-scale variations in solar activity. The arguments for a forthcoming Grand Solar Minimum are also increasingly compelling.

To what extent a Grand Solar Minimum will influence the Earth’s climate remains uncertain. As discussed on a previous blog post IPCC: solar variations don’t matter, the IPCC AR5 Ch 8 stated:

Nevertheless, even if there is such decrease in the solar activity, there is a high confidence that the TSI RF variations will be much smaller in magnitude than the projected increased forcing due to GHG.

The previous post also describes different perspectives on this from Svensmark and a 2013 NRC report (see also Effects of solar variability on climate; 21st century solar cooling.)

Solar indirect effects on climate remain at the knowledge frontier, and are associated with substantial uncertainty and ignorance. This uncertainty and ignorance is not a rationale for ignoring solar effects on the 21st century climate (and 22nd, 23rd centuries). And anyways, is the solar uncertainty (we understand the sign) really so much more greater than that associated with the effects of clouds on climate (see my recent post The cloud climate conundrum), where even the sign of the feedback is uncertain and the magnitude of cloud forcing swamps greenhouse gas radiative forcings.

But we are starting to see some ideas emerge as to how these solar effects and processes could be included in climate models. Independently of climate models, the statistical forecast technique used by Sanchez-Sesma provides the basis for creating alternative scenarios of the 21st century climate. I find his arguments about lags to be particularly important as we sort out the solar-climate effects.

Tackling the variability of solar activity and solar indirect effects seems more tractable than the cloud-climate problem and untangling the myriad of scales of ocean oscillations, so I would hope to see much more emphasis put on unraveling the solar-climate connections.

The policy significance of this issue is clear: if we are headed to a mid-20th century solar minimum, or a Grand Solar Minimum for the next two centuries, this will offset greenhouse warming to some extent. The extent of the offset depends on whether climate sensitivity to CO2 is on the larger or smaller end of the range of estimates, and the magnitude of the solar impact. But the sign of the solar offset is becoming increasingly clear: towards cooling.

Lees verder hier.

Maar nog opmerkelijker is nieuws dat ons uit Duitsland bereikte. Mijn trouwe lezers weten dat het PIK (‘Potsdam Institut für Klimafolgenforschung’) de klimaathysterie in Duitsland en ver daarbuiten regelmatig aanwakkert met paniekverhalen over die verschrikkelijke opwarming (die maar steeds niet wil komen). De directeur van dit instituut, Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, speelde ook een belangrijke rol in de opstelling van het klimaatgedeelte van de laatste pauselijke encycliek Laudate Sí. Zie hier.

Wie schetst mijn verbazing toen ik las dat nu ook het PIK met een wetenschappelijke verhandeling is gekomen die een Kleine IJstijd in het vooruitzich stelt in plaats van opwarming. Deze scoop stond in de ‘Berliner Kurir’ onder de titel: ‘Wissenschaftler warnen: Europa droht eine neue Eiszeit – im Miniformat.’

Dat is opvallend want, in tegenstelling tot bijvoorbeeld ‘Der Spiegel’, ‘Die Welt’ en de ‘Neue Zürcher Zeitung’, ben ik deze krant nog nooit tegen gekomen als bron van spannend klimaatnieuws.

Onder de titel, ‘U-Turn! Scientists At The PIK Potsdam Institute Now Warning Of A “Mini Ice Age”!’, heeft Pierre Gosselin, zoals gebruikelijk, voor Engelstalige lezers de hoofdpunten van het artikel in het Engels weergegeven.

Ik citeer:

The daily Berliner Kurier here writes today that solar physicists at the ultra-warmist Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) are warning that Europe may be facing “a mini ice age” due to a possible protracted solar minimum.

The Berliner Kurier writes:

That’s the conclusion that solar physicists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research reached when looking at solar activity.

For an institute that over the past 20 years has steadfastly insisted that man has been almost the sole factor in climate change over the past century and that the sun no longer plays a role, this is quite remarkable.
 
The Berliner Kurier reports that the PIK scientists foresee a weakening of the sun’s activity over the coming years. “That means that conversely it is going to get colder. The scientists are speaking of a little ice age.”

According to the PIK scientists, the reduced solar activity will, however, not be able to stop the global warming and only brake the warming up to 2100 by 0.3°C.

Given the extreme warnings of warming and sea level rise put out by the Potsdam Institute in the past, this still represents an extraordinary admission, one that has us suspecting a major climate turnaround may be ahead – despite all the efforts by the Potsdam Institute to play it all down. Here we see them possibly setting up a global warming postponement of a couple of decades. The sun plays a role after all.

The source of the Berliner Kurier report is the Austrian weather site wetter.at here. The wetter.at site writes that some solar physicists suspect the current solar inactivity may be “the start of a new grand minimum” like the one the planet saw in the 17th century and left Europe in an ice box.

Lees verder hier.

Het is verheugend dat het zelfreinigend vermogen van de wetenschap zelfs tot binnen het PIK, de oerbron van de klimaathysterie in Duitsland, is doorgedrongen. Tegelijkertijd heeft deze publicatie de geloofwaardigheid van de directeur van dit instituut en klimaatalarmist pur sang, Hans-Joachim Schellhuber, zodanig aangetast dat deze de eer beter aan zichzelf kan houden door af te treden.

Voor mijn eerdere bijdragen over klimaat en aanverwante zaken zie hier, hier, hier, hier en hier.

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