A Difference Of Opinions on Entering A Mauder Minimum

Forbes.com posting “Sun Flatlining Into Grand Minimum, Says Solar Physicist on JANUARY 20, 2014. Yes, the posting is nearly two years old. But the discordance about the Sun’s influence in the Earth’s climate could not be more evident in the posting.

From the posting:

““My opinion is that we are heading into a Maunder Minimum,” said Mark Giampapa, a solar physicist at the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona. “I’m seeing a continuation in the decline of the sunspots’ mean magnetic field strengths and a weakening of the polar magnetic fields and subsurface flows.”

David Hathaway, a solar physicist at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville adds:

“At the end of a sunspot cycle about all you have left are magnetic fields at the solar poles,” said Hathaway. “We’re at the sunspot maximum of Cycle 24. It’s the smallest sunspot cycle in 100 years and the third in a trend of diminishing sunspot cycles. So, Cycle 25 could likely be smaller than Cycle 24.”

Back to Giampapa:

“If we’re entering a Maunder Minimum, it could persist until the 2080s,” said Giampapa, who points out that if such a minimum’s primary effect is cooling, it could wreak havoc by curtailing agricultural growing seasons which, for instance, could lead to lower wheat production in breadbasket economies.

But Giampapa says it could also mean a global excursion from the mean, resulting in local climate extremes in terms of both anomalous temperatures and precipitation.

The author of the posting asks: “Could a Maunder Minimum mitigate a warming climate?”  Now Hathaway responds. “

Not likely, says Hathaway.

Although the rise of global temperatures seen in “the last decade or so seems to have currently leveled off,” says Hathaway, he notes that even a Maunder Minimum would still not be enough to counter the warming effects of anthropogenic climate change.

If anything, a Maunder Minimum may simply make existing weather and short term climate even more unusual and difficult to predict.”

I am really astonished that Hathaway believes he knows that man-made global warming is much more powerful than the Sun.   Or does he just not want to be bumped out of the tribe because he vocalized a view that is not part of the religion of the church of catastrophic global warming?

cbdakota