Today the sun’s surface has no visible sunspots, a sign of reduced solar eruptions, solar wind, and magnetic activity reaching out to earth
Winter and spring colder than usual? The NY Daily News, among others, thinks so:
The Daily News has no clue as to why this is happening. But those who have read Henri Svensmark and Nigel Calder’s The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change or good summaries do.
The solar wind — plasma flares from the sun’s surface that sweep out from the sun past the planets including earth — is presently at a minimum. This is often indicated by few or no sunspots. Like now.
The swiftly moving charged particles of the solar wind, when it is highly active, create a magnetic field, which wards off cosmic rays from earth. When it isn’t active, as is the case at present, more cosmic rays get through to the earth’s lower atmosphere and seed heavier cloud coverage. With fewer of the sun’s rays now reaching the earth’s surface because of the cloud cover, the planet cools. Winter and spring are colder.
Glimmerings of real science on the topic of climate and the solar wind sometime make it into publications otherwise dutifully pushing global warming panic, for example Nature.
Aurora activity is another indicator of solar activity affecting earth. It’s not zero at present, but it’s very low:
When solar activity is on the high end, auroras can be observed in lower Canada and the upper US.
Dutch painter Hendrick Averkamp was famous for his winter landscapes. He lived and painted during the Little Ice Age, just before its peak in the Maunder Minimum
Sunspot activity was very low during the Maunder minimum, from 1645 to 1715. This was the peak of the Little Ice Age. The river Thames froze over twenty-three times. English poet Edmund Spenser must have written his prothalamion, with its famous refrain “Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song” in high summertime.
New York’s Hudson River had a taste of the Little Ice Age Thames in January. It may be April now, but don’t put away those sweaters…yet.
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