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+--- Thread: Earth headed for 'mini ice age' within 15 years (/thread-1120.html)
Earth headed for 'mini ice age' within 15 years - C C - Jul 11, 2015
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/11733369/Earth-heading-for-mini-ice-age-within-15-years.html
EXCERPT: The earth is 15 years from a "mini ice-age" that will cause bitterly cold winters during which rivers such as the Thames freeze over, scientists have predicted. Solar researchers at the University of Northumbria have created a new model of the sun's activity which they claim produces "unprecedentedly accurate predictions".
They said fluid movements within the sun, which are thought to create 11-year cycles in the weather, will converge in such a way that temperatures will fall dramatically in the 2030s. Solar activity will fall by 60 per cent as two waves of fluid "effectively cancel each other out", according to Prof Valentina Zharkova.
In a presentation to the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno, she said the result would be similar to freezing conditions of the late 17th century....
RE: Earth headed for 'mini ice age' within 15 years - Magical Realist - Jul 11, 2015
I will be 70 then. In celebration of my first ice age, I will take up a new sport---glacier skiing. When I die, they can scatter my ashes on the Arizona tundra...
RE: Earth headed for 'mini ice age' within 15 years - Yazata - Jul 15, 2015
Quote:EXCERPT: The earth is 15 years from a "mini ice-age" that will cause bitterly cold winters during which rivers such as the Thames freeze over, scientists have predicted.
"Scientists" again! The super-human seers who can peer into the future and who are never, ever, wrong!
As always, I'm skeptical.
Quote:Solar researchers at the University of Northumbria have created a new model of the sun's activity which they claim produces "unprecedentedly accurate predictions".
So it's all based on a model, which they haven't really forward-tested. (Maybe they back-tested it on historical data or something, but they haven't tested it by making predictions of the future and then waiting to see whether the predictions come true. No "climate scientist" ever does that.)
Quote:They said fluid movements within the sun, which are thought to create 11-year cycles in the weather, will converge in such a way that temperatures will fall dramatically in the 2030s.
There's apparently a whole bunch of assumptions built into their model: The Sun's internal dynamics are cyclical and we know what these cycles and their periods are. (All of them 11 years? That sounds unlikely.) So do a little Fourier analysis or something and decompose the seemingly random variations of the Sun's behavior into a set of underlying cycles coinciding and canceling.
Quote:Solar activity will fall by 60 per cent as two waves of fluid "effectively cancel each other out", according to Prof Valentina Zharkova.
In a presentation to the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno, she said the result would be similar to freezing conditions of the late 17th century....
Could be. At least her prediction is reasonably near-term and will be easy to observationally test. (And I appreciate that it contradicts the 'Earth is going to heat up in an extinction-level event in less than a century' hysteria. To go against that crazy tide takes a great deal of courage in today's academic environment. Dissent can destroy careers.)
Of course the 17th century cool period wasn't a brief flash in the pan, as a coincidence in a bunch of 11-year cycles would be. It lasted for the better part of the century. Which suggests that this particular model might not accurately describe whatever was responsible for that climate event.
So I remain rather skeptical but will watch with interest to see if it comes true.