Sleeping Like A Baby

Ever wonder why Al Gore doesn't want to talk about the Sun? Ever wonder what really drives climate on Earth? A little solar system science might help -- The Earth is suspended in a sort of "goldilocks orbit" where the Sun makes the planet not too hot, not too cold. But that orbit and the constant warm is not constant. The Earth orbit varies, the output of the Sun varies, the solar wind varies, the heating and cooling effects on planet Earth varies. Nearly all real scientists know this. The vagaries of the Earth's obit were first explained by Serbian civil engineer and mathematician Milutin Milanković. We are just beginning to understand the rest of the story.



SOHO sunspot scan, 2-18-2008. Scientists have been waiting for over a year for solar cycle 24 to begin. A blink in August 2006 and a blink in January 2008 raised hopes, but all remains quiet.

Every climate scientist in the world has known for at least several years now, that late 20th century warming was driven almost entirely by the very high levels of solar activity between 1940 and 2000, quietly called the modern maxima. They also know the corollary, that when solar activity drops into a down phase, the earth will get cold, possibly even precipitating the next ice age.

When the Sun goes quite, the Earth grows cold. It's what is happening right now, the Sun is very quite. The snows come, the snow pack causes another effect, the white surface of the snow increases the Earth's albedo and reflects back into space some the heat that would otherwise heat the planet. The snow pack combines with clouds which do much the same thing.

How might this work, with a twist -- The leading theory says that it is the Galactic Cosmic Radiation(GCR) rather than the solar wind that directly affects global temperature. High energy GCR ionizes the atmosphere, inducing the formation of clouds that reflect sunlight back into space. This increases the Earth's albedo, or put another way, reflectivity as seen from space. Under this theory, the warming effect of the solar wind is indirect. The solar wind actually sweeps away most of the GCR, the result is the solar wind in-effect blows the clouds away, warming the Earth. The GCR phenomena is a recent discovery, for more information, see Henrik Svensmark’s 2007 book The Chilling Stars.

The bad news is when the solar wind dies down because sunspot activity decreases, the GCR has a more direct effect on the Earth, forming clouds and causing precipitation. The phenomena is additive, snow pack and cloud formation, it tends to reflect back into space the warming light of the Sun, and the Earth cools down. At its simplest, the relationship between the solar magnetic field strength and the Earth’s climate is this: lower magnetic field strength means few sunspots, fewer sunspots means less solar wind, less solar wind means more galactic cosmic rays, more galactic cosmic rays means more low level cloud formation, more low level clouds means more sunlight reflected back into space, which in turn means less heating of the Earth’s surface and
atmosphere.

Here is a paper that supports to coming low sunspots, it will be published in March 2008 that the The Heartland Institute, is sponsoring "2008 International Conference on Climate Change", March 2 - March 4, 2008 in New York City. Solar_Arch_NY_Mar2_08.pdf

And now you know the rest of the story -- Much simplified of course.