SOLAR ACTIVITY A DOMINANT FACTOR IN CLIMATE DYNAMICS (2)

SOLAR ACTIVITY A DOMINANT FACTOR IN CLIMATE DYNAMICS

by

Dr Theodor Landscheidt

Schroeter Institute for Research in Cycles of Solar Activity
Nova Scotia, Canada

Those scientists who spread anxiety in the eighties by predicting climate catastrophees cannot plead that at this time there were not any publications pointing to a relation between solar activity and climate that had to be taken seriously. The relationship in Figure was presented at the international climate symposium “Weather and Climate Responses to Solar Variations” in Boulder, Colorado, as early as 1982 [55]. The plot shows a temperature time series after H. H. Lamb and C. D. Schönwiese at the bottom, radiocarbon data after J. E. Eddy [16] — proxy data reflecting solar activity — covering the interval 1000 to 1950 at the top, and in the middle data I had derived from a semiquantitative model of cyclic solar activity. S and M mark the Spoerer minimum and the Maunder minimum of sunspot activity, while O points to the medieval climate optimum which coincided with very strong solar activity. The synchronism of these three time series, covering 950 years, extends the connection elaborated by Friis-Christensen and Lassen 550 years farther back into the past and opens a possibility of long-range forecasts, as the data in the second curve are based on calculations that can be extended far into the future. On this basis, I forecasted, in 1982, that we should expect declining temperatures after 1990 and probably a new Little Ice Age around 2030. In further papers I specified this prediction [58, 59, 63]. I also expected considerably weaker sunspot activity after 1990. The slowly ascending new sunspot cycle, which started in May 1996, seems to follow the predicted trend.