Hey everyone! In today’s blog I thought it would be interesting to talk about solar activity (the lack thereof this year) and what that means, if anything, for the upcoming winter. If you follow our social media pages and watched our winter forecast we talked about this being a low solar year as we head into another solar minimum. I wanted to discuss more about what solar cycles are and what this can mean for our long-term patterns.
Just discussing the sun in general, it is the primary driving force of climate. It provides the energy for life on earth, drives ocean currents, and weather. Small changes in the sun’s energy can have a strong impact on Earth’s climate, and that’s where sunspots come into play. The sun’s magnetic field goes through cycles lasting roughly 11 years. Technically, it’s a 22 year period when you look at variations in the sun’s magnetic field. Sunspots are dark areas on the sun where the magnetic field is very strong. These are frequently associated with solar flares which can launch high-energy particles towards earth. A solar maximum is simply a point in the 11 year solar cycles that sunspots and solar energy are most abundant, and solar minimums define the period in a solar cycle where the amount of sunspots is lowest, and thus solar energy is the lowest. You can see by the international sunspot number over the past 13 years that we reached a solar minimum in 2009, reached another peak in our current solar cycle (2014), and are now nearing the end of current solar cycle as we head into a minimum.
Here is what sunspots look like on the sun…..you can see the blanket of sunspots in July of 2000 as the sun was nearing maximum activity, compared to March 2009 when there were no sunspots!
The Earth experienced a very long period of little to no sunspot activity in the 1600s and 1700s known as the Maunder Minimum, or Little Ice Age. Earth experienced a big boom in population during a previous very warm period during the 1200s-1300s (also with high solar activity), then steady cooling until we reached the Maunder Minimum. Unprepared for how to feed the world’s increased population from the Medieval Warming, there was a massive depopulation. Deaths occurred not only from lack of food, but due to people huddling together in an effort to stay warm and diseases spread quickly. The catastrophe was global. During the early 1700s, the French army used frozen rivers as thoroughfares to invade the Netherlands. Some believe that the chronic shortage of grain and bread due to the poor climate helped precipitate the French Revolution. The Little Ice Age lasted until 1850. This was a hard time to be alive!!
Looking at our current solar cycle, this is the lowest solar minimum since the Maunder Minimum…BUT the difference here is we are forecast to see another rise as we emerge into our new solar cycle #25 as we head into the 2020’s. We are approaching the lowest solar period since the Dalton Minimum in the early 1800s.
Interesting enough, you can see how global temperatures dropped during the Dalton Minimum of the early 1800s, after rising in the late 1700s.
The 16-1700’s are an extreme example how extended periods of low solar activity and no solar cycles can impact climate. There is also debate that IF we do see another solar period of that nature, how the anthropogenic, or human induced greenhouse gases would impact that. We can take a simple approach by looking at recent years in the instrumental data that had low solar activity and what temperatures looked like during these years. NOTE: Understand you can’t automatically assume a year with high/low solar activity will be warm or cool. Other factors will have a larger impact, but you can take the idea of low solar activity working in the background to magnify the risk of cold if it combines with other favorable factors (EX: large volcanic eruption). There is a lot of debate on this, but we do know that solar energy is lower during solar minimums, and some research has shown that small differences can have a big impact on Earth’s climate. If you look at winters since 1950 that had a solar minimum and averaged them out, here’s what you get for temperatures…..
Looking at a correlation between temperatures and solar cycles in the recent climate period 1981-2010, we do find somewhat of a correlation to colder winter temps in the central/eastern U.S.
Looking at precipitation correlations to solar cycles – a stronger signal for drier conditions in the southern Plains and lower Ohio Valley (green and yellow), while there is somewhat of a signal of increased precipitation across the Northeast.
This is an interesting way to see how low solar activity years fared regarding temperatures heading into the winter. Hopefully this blog gave you a better idea of what solar cycles are, and how they can have an impact on the winter forecast. History tells us that years featuring a minimum in solar activity can have a buffer to be colder than normal, especially in the eastern half of the U.S. Just another favorable factor for winter weather lovers this winter!
Work in the snow removal business? You need an accurate weather provider that can give you detailed, accurate forecasts with the ability to contact us 24/7, and receive certified snowfall totals. We can do just that! Inquire by going to bamwx.com/contact-us or e-mail [email protected]! We’d love to help your snow-removal business this winter season! Have a great day!
Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday!
-Nathan Kitchens
