Quiet sun puts Europe on ice

[nebula]

Quiet sun puts Europe on ice

14 April 2010 by Stuart Clark

Magazine issue 2756.

BRACE yourself for more winters like the last one, northern Europe. Freezing conditions could become more likely: winter temperatures may even plummet to depths last seen at the end of the 17th century, a time known as the Little Ice Age. That's the message from a new study that identifies a compelling link between solar activity and winter temperatures in northern Europe.

The research finds that low solar activity promotes the formation of giant kinks in the jet stream. These kinks can block warm westerly winds from reaching Europe, while allowing in winds from Arctic Siberia. When this happens in winter, northern Europe freezes, even though other, comparable regions of the globe may be experiencing unusually mild conditions.

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Judith Lean, a solar-terrestrial physicist at the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC, says the analysis is statistically robust, and reckons it forms a piece in the larger puzzle of how solar activity influences weather. Often cited by climate-change sceptics as a cause of global warming (see "What are you up to, sunshine?"), the effects of solar cycles have largely evaded the grasp of climate modellers. Lockwood found that when he removed 20th-century warming due to industrial emissions from his models, the statistical link between solar lows and extreme winters was stronger, suggesting the phenomenon is unrelated to global warming. But the sun undeniably has a big influence on weather systems: it is, after all, the energy source that powers them.

Read full article here

[Guest HIS girl]

Oh my goodness - does that mean hotter summers here (Aus) ??

[Steve_S]

This is why they have started calling it "climate change."

[Guest HIS girl]

This is why they have started calling it "climate change."

[ayin jade]

Except that we are entering into a period of increased solar activity, not decreased solar activity. That period started around the beginning of january this year.

[Rick-Parker]

It just proves that the weather is cyclical, and there is no credible evidence that man is the reason for the season.

[wyguy]

Just wait for the screams of "a new ice age" and an appeal for truckloads of grant money to study how it's all man's fault.