More cloudy days forecast for 2050… in sync with the AMO… nothing to do with CO2
Hat-tip: Klimanachrichten
In a recent paper published in Nature here, German researchers Horst-Joachim Lüdecke, Gisela-Müller Plath and Sebastian Lüning analyzed changes in sunshine duration by using modern statistical methods for a total of seven monthly time series of sunshine durations going back 122 to a maximum of 145 years.
The aim of the study was to identify possible correlations of sunshine duration with climate drivers.
Powerful climate-changing oceanic cycles
Among the most important cyclical drivers are ocean cycles. For example, El Niño in the Pacific, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). These influence the weather developments in Europe and impact temperatures, precipitation and other weather or climate parameters over large distances.
AMO drives sunshine duration over Europe
The authors found that in the case of Europe’s sunshine duration, the AMO (defined as the mean sea surface temperature of the North Atlantic) is a decisive driving force of Central European sunshine duration. The authors analyzed seven measuring stations of sunshine duration, located in a north to south order, in Copenhagen, Potsdam, De Bilt, Krakow, Vienna, on the Zugspitze in Bavaria and in Trento. All seven sunshine time series saw an “unusually significant” correlation between AMO and sunshine duration.
“Despite the strong annual fluctuations in sunshine duration, the correlation between sunshine duration and AMO is clearly recognizable,” reports Klimanachrichten. “The known stability of the AMO going back at least 8000 years has been known for some time. This and the highly significant correlations of all seven sunshine duration series with the AMO therefore allow a robust prediction of future sunshine duration trends.”
The correlation would allow making sunshine duration projections into the future, which would be important and useful for agriculture and solar energy production, for example. But the authors found that there are “strong fluctuations from one year to the next”. This is shown in Figure 4 of the paper with the blue dashed continuation of the AMO over time.
The overall synchronicity, however, allows relatively reliable sunshine duration forecasts for Central Europe. Currently the AMO is at a peak and is projected to drop over the next 30 years, meaning sunshine duration should fall to around 1600 hours annually by 2050 – from about 1850 hours today.
“As far as the intensity of the decrease in sunshine over the next few decades is concerned, the seven sunshine durations show a clear north-south trend. In the next 30 years, sunshine duration in Copenhagen will have decreased by 16% compared to today,” reports Klimnachrichten. “For Trieste and Vienna in the south, on the other hand, it will only be 9%. The electricity yield from photovoltaic systems will therefore decrease significantly in Germany over the next three decades, somewhat more in the north than in the south.”
Link: Lüdecke et al. 2024: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-73506-5
Report (in German): https://eike-klima-energie.eu/
Isn’t 80 years the Gleissberg cycle? Does anyone know if that has anything to do with it? A 16% reduction in sunshine hours is a big deal. Can someone calculate what the temperature drop will be?
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What a fantastic post! , Thank you!
GTU
What a fantastic post! , Thank you!
THANK YOU