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Cold Winters Correlation with Sunspots


Ed in Houston

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Most people have probably heard of the sun's 11 year sunspot cycle. Some years there are almost no sunspots at the trough of the cycle and represent a calm less active and cooler sun. One can think of it as when there are a lot of sun spots it is boiling and when there are few spots it is cooler.

Recent sun spot cycles:

http://www.sidc.be/images/wolfmms.png

 

Notice the relationship of the years of the cold events below relative to the sun spot cycles. The cold events tend to occur near the sunspot minimum.

 

January 1950 saw unprecedented cold and snowfall in the Pacific Northwest, with normally mild Seattle and Portland both falling below zero.

The winter of 1962–63 was the coldest for 223 years in England. I was living in Shreveport Louisiana in 1963 and it was the coldest there in my lifetime, 3F.

In 1977 it snowed in Miami and the Bahamas.

In January 1985, it was so cold that President Ronald Reagan's inauguration took place in the Capital Rotunda . In addition to the cold in Washington, D.C., Miami Beach recorded its only freeze since records began, lasting for a full three hours. Several other Southern cities set all-time record cold.

1996 Great Midwest cold outbreak – Late January and early February was Northern Minnesota’s coldest short term period on record. The record low of −60 °F (−51.1 °C) was recorded in Tower, Minnesota. Cities like Minneapolis experienced temperatures near −35 °F (−37.2 °C).

2010, in January and February a cold wave affected much of the Deep South in the United States and Florida.

 

The winter of 2018-2019 will once again will be near the trough of the sunspot cycle. Be prepared for more cold events.  In Houston we have already had the earliest snow on record. 

Of course there are other factors that are important to what you winter may be like El Niño and La Nina events but the correlation with cold winters is pretty strong just considering the sun.

Thanksgiving's High Temperatures Could Be Among the Coldest on Record in Parts of the Northeast

The sun really is cooler at the troughs of the sunspots cycle as measured in watts per square hitting the Earth on the vertical scale on the graph below.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8ZxXM-fGo38/UtzQ1FcwfbI/AAAAAAAAAg8/nSkHpHHObBg/s1600/pmod-jan2014.png

 

But what is the future forecast of solar out put by astrophysicists? They are forecasting a prolonged solar minimum for the next few decades!

http://jo.nova.s3.amazonaws.com/graph/astronomy/solar/cycles/shepard-2014-fig-3.gif

Notice the forecast trend for a cooler sun by the astrophysicist over the coming decades. The last time this occurred was during the Little ice age and was called the Maunder minimum and the Dalton minimum. During the Dalton minimum the Mississippi froze over at New Orleans and ice bergs were spewing into the Gulf of Mexico.

https://www.livescience.com/61716-sun-cooling-global-warming.html

 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Sunspot_Numbers.png

 

No one has a crystal ball when it comes to predicting the weather or climate but there is some pretty strong evidence that colder winters are ahead.

Ed in Houston

 

 

Edited by Ed in Houston
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Only thing I am concerned with is the spotting seems to have a lesser peak this time around before it goes into the minimum part of the cycle. What does that mean? Hopefully just a blip. 

LOWS 16/17 12F, 17/18 3F, 18/19 7F, 19/20 20F

Palms growing in my garden: Trachycarpus Fortunei, Chamaerops Humilis, Chamaerops Humilis var. Cerifera, Rhapidophyllum Hystrix, Sabal Palmetto 

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It means that there will be fewer warm winters in between cold winters as the sun becomes less active and the cold becomes pervasive.

Ed in Houston

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Averaging out the past winters where there has been similar low solar activity as we see during this current period of 2018- 2021 yields this forecast relative to the average of 1981-2010.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56530521e4b0c307d59bbe97/t/5bba33e6f9619a590048067a/1538929648105/Analog_years_temp_anom_plot.png?format=750w

 

Ed in Houston

 

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  • 2 months later...

Well It looks like the correlation of cold winters with reduced sunspot activity is holding up pretty well. The coldest wind chill I saw was -77F in Thief River Falls Minnesota. The prediction by some solar astrophysicists of fewer sunspots in the coming decades could translate into more frequent extreme cold. If it gets much colder in the coming years, I am afraid the infrastructure could collapse in some areas leaving large populations in an extremely cold stone age death grip of a Little Ice Age.

Ed in Houston

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Could be a COLD 10 years we are about to see...

LOWS 16/17 12F, 17/18 3F, 18/19 7F, 19/20 20F

Palms growing in my garden: Trachycarpus Fortunei, Chamaerops Humilis, Chamaerops Humilis var. Cerifera, Rhapidophyllum Hystrix, Sabal Palmetto 

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