Professor Emeritus Nils-Axel Mörner, one of Sweden’s most distinguished climate scientists, has published a paper in the now forbidden Pattern Recognition Physics journal (PRP). His paper warns that the earth may see little ice age conditions by 2030. No wonder the climate establishment mobilized to shut down the PRP special edition! The peer-review uproar is nothing but a diversion.
The paper, titled Planetary beat and solar-terrestrial responses, looks at the sun’s well-documented cyclical behavior and the mechanisms that could be driving solar cycles, which have a proven impact on the Earth’s climate. The paper’s abstract concludes:
The centennial changes between grand solar maxima and minima imply that we will soon be in a new solar minimum and, in analogy with past events, probably also in Little Ice Age climatic conditions.”
In the paper, Mörner also adds:
At around 2030–2050, we will be in a new grand minimum situation (as evidenced by a large number of authors: e.g. Mörner, 2010, 2011; Cionco and Compagnucci, 2012; Casey and Humlum, 2013; Salvador, 2013). The driving forces seem to be the planetary beat and its effects on the solar activity, and the effects of the solar wind upon the Earth (Fig. 6). During previous solar minima, the Earth experienced Little Ice Age climatic conditions. Therefore, we may once again experience such climatic conditions when the new grand minimum occurs.”
In the paper’s conclusion he reiterates the warning:
At the next solar minimum, to occur around 2030–2050, there might be a return to Little Ice Age climatic conditions (as was the case during the Dalton, Maunder and Spörer minima).”
Mörner’s paper looks at the sun’s impacts on the Earth’s climate through solar cycles, whose history has been reconstructed for the entire Holocene through the analysis of 10Be and 14C isotopes. The impacts of solar cycles on the Earth’s climate is very well documented. It is undeniable.
For example there’s a strong link between solar activity and European winters, see here. Also NoTricksZone recently listed over 120 recent papers showing that solar activity have a clear impact on the earth’s climate. The body of scientific literature out there is massive.
So what causes the sun to undergo cyclic changes? In his paper Mörner asks what could be driving the cyclic changes in the sun, and theorizes that it is the planetary motion and the gravitational forces exerted through the planets on the sun’s dynamic mass. The idea is not new, and there is a growing body of scientific literature that evidences it.
Mörner’s paper writes:
Solar activity changes with time in a cyclic pattern. The origin of those changes may be caused by planetary motion around the Sun, affecting the position of the Sun’s motion with respect to the centre of mass and subjecting the Sun to changes in angular momentum and gravitational tidal forces. […]
Abreu et al. (2012; cf. Steinhilber et al., 2007) were able to show that there is an “excellent spectral agreement between the planetary tidal effects acting on the tachocline and the solar magnetic activity”. This is illustrated in Fig. 3. It implies a benchmark in the planetary–solar research. The planetary hypothesis took an important step towards a planetary theory.”
Source: www.pattern-recogn-phys-2013.pdf
This is plausible because something connected to the sun has to be causing the sun’s cyclic activity. And what more obvious explanation could there be than the 8 planets (plus Pluto) orbiting around the sun? All planets exert a gravitational force on the sun that is hardly negligible. Mörner writes:
The multi-body interaction of the planetary motions on the Sun’s motion is so large that the Sun’s motion around the centre of mass is perturbed by up to about 1 solar radius. The planetary beat also includes the transfer of angular momentum and tidal forces.”
This all has an impact on the sun’s interior and hence its cycles.
Mörner is not alone in claiming we are headed for a low-solar-activity induced cooling. He joins a growing number of scientists who warn the earth should prepare for cooling, and not warming.
Nils-Axel Mörner completed his Ph.D at Stockholm University in Sweden with postdoctoral studies at Western University in London, Canada. He was the head of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics at Stockholm University. He was an IPCC author and has published more than 500 papers in reputed journals and several books. He has presented some 550 papers at international conferences. He is a world expert on sea level changes.
Above chart source: www.pattern-recogn-phys-2013.pdf
This reads more like an article (summarizing former research, supported with educated guesses and hand-waving) rather than a research paper.
Regarding the climate development for the next five years, compare Mörner’s prognosis with the UK Met Office’s latest {half-} decadal forecast:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/news/decadal-forecast-2014-2018
Perhaps we’ll have to wait another fifteen years to see who was right (if either). Such is the nature of Climate Science.
Kurt in Switzerland
P.S. The Met Office, despite use of Orwellian Newspeak, e.g., “… global average temperature is expected to remain high …” (as though that were what Slingo & predecessors had forecast ten to twenty years, as opposed to a return to the much prophesied warming – which has been curiously AWOL of late), appears to be bet-hedging here: “…the forecast reflects the slightly cooler conditions currently prevailing associated with the recent ‘pause’ in global surface warming.” Also: “… indications of a developing pattern of cooling in the north Atlantic sub-polar gyre…”
Most importantly, the following sentence should quiet anyone loudly proclaiming settled science: “A larger ensemble and a deeper understanding of the global temperature pause would be needed to robustly quantify the probability of new record temperatures and other regional aspects of the forecast.”
Kurt in Switzerland
“supported with educated guesses and hand-waving”
I’m surprised to hear such nonsense from you, Kurt. If you read the paper carefully, there are dozens and dozens of papers showing that solar cycles impact the climate, and that the planets exert forces on the sun, so much that they cause the sun to shift about by an entire diameter. This is all based on measurements and data. I really don’t know what “guesses” you’re referring to here.
Pierre –
I’m not arguing that Nils-Axel is wrong (indeed, I think that the connections he is suggesting have been sorely overlooked/ignored by mainstream climate science and may also shed some much-needed light on the subject of climate); my point is merely that the paper/article lacks any rigorous discussion of the numbers.
Kurt in Switzerland
sure there is a lot of evidence on a qualitative correlation, the question is quantitative though, how much?
We have solar cycles that coincide with changes in climate. You say yourself there is correlation. The possibilities here are very limited. I seriously doubt climate on Earth causes changes on the sun. Thus, it has to be the other way around. Also what could cause the changes on the sun? Here too the possibilities appear to be very limited.
The Met’s decadal forecasts are renowned for over-predicting warming. Not an “authority” I would quote.
O/T in my quest for absolute temperatures, here’s BEST land only global average temperature:
http://berkeleyearth.org/summary-of-findings
About 9.75 deg C
I would love to see a synthesis of BEST and and an SST product in absolute temps. Anyone know one?
I’d prefer to hear reaction to Mörner and not waste time and space on the crap from BEST.
Mörner is basically a confirmation of Landscheidt; who made a stunning long term forecast I think in the 80ies. For obvious reasons I dismiss the CO2AGW models; if I have to place my trust in a long term forecast it’s a Landscheidt/Mörner forecast. As CO2AGW can’t explain the LIA and the MWP.
Piers Corbyn, long-term weather forecaster, is also of the opinion that we are entering a minimum ice age. I have read a lot of papers connecting the solar activity to the climate.
We seem to forget that it was only until such time that we could launch satellites that we could detect solar winds. in the 1960s.
Continental drift, was held back until the drilling of ocean cores proved the movement of the plates and today we have most of the plates identified and delineated, and can measure their annual movement (or drift). The mechanism that drives the movement of the plates had to be postulated and conjured up to fit after the fact was proven. Before that the shrunken apple theory was popular.
The mechanism by which the solar activity influences the climate may still be a bit sketchy, but that doesn’t mean that apples didn’t drop to the ground before Newton outlined his theory of gravity.
Additional info on planetary motion and EOO Earth orbit oscillations in
http://knowledgeminer.eu/eoo_paper.html
showing that the decade 2000-2010 was the hottest, all other to come
will show lower temps. The end of global warming.
Man made global warming [via man made CO2 emissions] was utter tosh, undoubtedly the world has warmed up since the phases of the LIA but to say that global warming has now stopped, worse it is going into reverse “little ice age in as little as 15 years” – that’s worrying stuff PG.
I think of the wasted £$€billions and wonder – instead of wasting subsidies on biocrop fuels, planting bird choppers and solar arrays around Europe and the the United states. What if, some of that money had been spent worthwhile and investigative scientific, ie, proper research. What about, for the future say putting money into a programme of development of fusion reactors or in the near term, large scale development of Thorium reactors, and immediately building new and efficient coal fired electricity generating plants. Perhaps – then, the west would be less financially strapped and in a far better economic situation – to dealing with cold.
COLD, is the enemy of mankind and from time immemorial – since we lived in caves and up until fairly recently, we seemed to have grasped this existential fact rather well. In that, cold kills, cold costs money and uses massive amounts of energy…………That was, until the greens saw an opportunity took over the gravy train, mugged the political elites. After that, circa 1988 – the collective sanity of the west dissolved, almost overnight we threw out the enlightenment and four and a half thousand years of science, of learning, history and common sense in- a cacophony of screaming chicken little panic, all over a fiction – a myth named CAGW.
Blame the eco warriors, blame the politicians, cease funding the NGOs and put an end to; PIK, Met Office, GISS, NOAA, Penn State ‘climate change disney world’ and all the rest – particularly the UN-IPCC.
“Perhaps – then, the west would be less financially strapped and in a far better economic situation – to dealing with cold. ”
Nothing that a 30% expropriation of all private assets – in the EU – couldn’t solve.
There are a number of good people who have convinced themselves that Barycenter theory is quackery. I believe history will prove them wrong. One objection I’ve heard is that tidal forces are insufficient. But the mere fact that a viscous body of great dimensions must react to a moving center of mass…. perhaps only with changes in flow of currents within the sun suggests to me it remains plausible.
We should keep an open mind rather than discard this theory. If it ultimately proves true that planetary positions can predict solar behaviors and resulting climate impacts, there will be little doubt they are somehow involved.
I think it’s important to recognize that it is implausible that they would have no effect.
Our climate is determined by many terrestial and extra-terrestial factors. To varying degrees. We don’t know any well enough to be able to definitively identify specific ones and their magnitude. In part, that’s because we’re “swimming in the soup” and our perspective is biased by the things that are close to us.
While it’s easy to say “it’s the sun, stupid”; we don’t know the how and especially why the sun varies as it does. (And virtually nothing about the indirect effects on terrestial environment.)
Detecting synchronicity in patterns between plausible influences and observed behaviour provides testable hypotheses. We ought to do that.
Nils has been saying that for some time. I have my doubts, but it seemed worth writing up for WUWT, see
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/05/nils-axel-morner-arctic-environment-by-the-middle-of-this-century/
My sense is that Mörner should stick to sea levels, but keep an eye on those glaciers, they may start gaining on you.
The sun is a giant superconductor the core of which is surrounded by a vast sea of liquid hydrogen. The Miessner Effect expells the magnetic field of the superconducting core out into the seething plasma of the photosphere. Sunspots occur as a result of orbital planetary gravitational perterbations exerted upon the sun’s core thus heating it (volcanic activity). The liquid hydrogen sea impinging upon the heated superconducting core is volatilized into gas which boils up through the liquid hydrogen sea over-pressurizing the gas envelope created by the relatively thin photospheric sheath producing a breach therein…a breach we call a sunspot! The stellar fusion dynamo core theory is pure hogwash having not one single piece of credible evidence in support thereof!
Somewhere on youtube there is there is lecture by Feynman saying educated (or not) guessing is an integral part of the scientific process, followed by testing. There are plenty of ground breaking scientific papers that required hand waving, for which a proper explanation was not found until much later. Sure there are elements in the chain from planetary orbits to the sun to climate on earth for which a full proof is not currently available and may not be for a long time. The reason this was dismissed years ago was that TSI variation was known to be too small. But the critical mechanism has since been identified via magnetic effects and CME etc., not TSI.
On the other hand, to argue that CO2 drives climate change in the 1970-2000 period. but not previously, that natural variability via other factors is weak, except when CO2 amplifies said other factors requires outright fraud, silencing of dissenting ideas, along with hiding all nonconforming data.
Luna, Earth’s so-called moon, is close enough and big enough to influence air, water, and rock on its fellow traveler as they do their dance through space. Chiefio has written on this several times and just recently so has Clive best. Clive’s post is still at the top. At chiefio, E.M.’s latest Luna post is on 25 January and it links to one the day before. That one links to earlier posts on the topic.
I’m hoping for more research on oceans and climate related to moon nodes and standstills for the simple reason that if I have to wait 20 to 30 years – well, I don’t expect to still be here. Anyway, the current demonization of carbon dioxide fits the need of the greens, the UN, and the USA’s policy wonks so that’s what we will get until NYC gets pushed into the Atlantic by an advancing glacier.
Where I live, here in the North of England and not so very long ago – it is estimated there was between 2-5 thousand feet of ice [above my head]. It [the ice] will return, it’s just a case of when. Climate changes all the time, as the sun goes ‘quiet’ we should all give pause and really start to think.
Blaming mm CO2…………………….. is a green chimera.
Morner wrote a very nice paper where he qualitatively summarizes the interconnections among astronomical and climate system. Above somebody criticized the article for being mostly qualitative. However, the known math is in the references. The purpose of the paper was to schematically refer to this literature. Which is useful.
For those who would like to see more math, look at my publications on my web-site.
Or read my own paper in the “PRP Forbidden Book”:
“The complex planetary synchronization structure of the solar system”
http://www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/2/1/2014/prp-2-1-2014.pdf
Which is still a general paper summarizing several papers that can be readable to many persons.
Or look at the other papers in the “Forbidden Book”. Some of them are quite mathematical!
Nicola,
That was me. My response to Pierre clarified the extent of my criticism (Mörner’s paper was more of an article than a research paper).
But I’ll try to read your [more rigorous] papers with time.
I wish more funding went into trying to better understand planetary-solar-cosmic factors in climate (but that wouldn’t provide a basis for increasing tax revenue from supposedly evil industries, now would it?)… Oops, guess I let the cat out of the bag.
In ogni caso, complimenti per il vostro coraggio!
Kurt in Switzerland
I believe the antipathy towards Landschied’s hypothesis at Watts Up With That lead to the disparegment of the PRP articles by several people on that site. A closed mind is an unscientific mind. All things are possible unless proven otherwise. The unknown unknowns are what are taking down the Global Warming hypothesis by cooling the planet in spite of increasing CO2. Nemeses has Hubris by the throat!
Don’t make yourself unreliably by writing about this silly paper.
Do you think that we could get the Swedish scientist to show up at Gore’s ‘
Global Warming conferences ?