UNITED STATES Climate Summary April 2008

The average temperature in April 2008 was 51.0 F. This was -1.0 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 29th coolest April in 114 years. The temperature trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.

2.39 inches of precipitation fell in April. This was -0.04 inches less than the 1901-2000 average, the 54th driest such month on record. The precipitation trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.01 inches per decade.

Sunspot cycles, galactic cosmic rays and "global warming"

If you look at the chart below, you will see that sunspot activity (during solar maxes--the individual peaks) has been relatively high since about 1900 and almost non-existent for the period between about 1625 and 1750. This period is known as the Maunder (sunspot) Minimum or "Little Ice Age".

From BBC News [yr: 2004]:
A new [2004] analysis shows that the Sun is more active now than it has been at anytime in the previous 1,000 years. Scientists based at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich used ice cores from Greenland to construct a picture of our star's activity in the past. They say that over the last century the number of sunspots rose at the same time that the Earth's climate became steadily warmer.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3869753.stm

It's really hard to imagine how this little ball of fire could have any impact on our climate at all.

But the main arguments being made for a solar-climate connection is not so much to do with the heat of the Sun but rather with its magnetic cycles. When the Sun is more magnetically active (typically around the peak of the 11 year sunspot cycle --we are a few yrs away at the moment), the Sun's magnetic field is better able to deflect away incoming galactic cosmic rays (highly energetic charged particles coming from outside the solar system). The GCRs are thought to help in the formation of low-level cumulus clouds -the type of clouds that BLOCK sunlight and help cool the Earth. So when the Sun's MF is acting up (not like now), less GCRs reach the Earth's atmosphere, less low level sunlight-blocking clouds form, and more sunlight gets through to warm the Earth's surface...naturally. Clouds are basically made up of tiny water droplets. When dust particles in the atmosphere become ionized by incoming GCRs they become very 'attractive' to water molecules, in a purely chemical sense of the word.-Eye On The Left

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2008: "The Center for Sun-Climate Research at the DNSC investigates the connection between variations in the intensity of cosmic rays and climatic changes on Earth. This field of research has been given the name 'cosmoclimatology'"..."Cosmic ray intensities – and therefore cloudiness – keep changing because the Sun's magnetic field varies in its ability to repel cosmic rays coming from the Galaxy, before they can reach the Earth." :
http://www.spacecenter.dk/research/sun-climate

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The graph above represents temperature and CO2 levels over the past 400,000 years. It is the same exact data Al Gore and the rest of the man-made global warmers refer to. The blue line is temps, the red CO2 levels. The deep valleys represent 4 separate glaciation periods. Now look very carefully at this relationship between temps and CO2 levels and keep in mind that Gore claims this data is the 'proof' that CO2 has warmed the earth in the past. But does the graph indeed show this? Nope. In fact, rising CO2 levels all throughout this 400,000 year period actually lagged behind temperature increases by an average of 800 years!-Eye On The Left

This just in yesterday from the scientific journal Nature:

Nature 453, 84-88 (1 May 2008) | doi:10.1038/nature06921;
Received 25 June 2007; Accepted 14 March 2008; Corrected 8 May 2008

Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector

The climate of the North Atlantic region exhibits fluctuations on decadal timescales that have large societal consequences. Prominent examples include hurricane activity in the Atlantic (1), and surface-temperature and rainfall variations over North America (2), Europe (3) and northern Africa (4). Although these multidecadal variations are potentially predictable if the current state of the ocean is known (5, 6, 7), the lack of subsurface ocean observations8 that constrain this state has been a limiting factor for realizing the full skill potential of such predictions (9). Here we apply a simple approach—that uses only sea surface temperature (SST) observations—to partly overcome this difficulty and perform retrospective decadal predictions with a climate model. Skill is improved significantly relative to predictions made with incomplete knowledge of the ocean state (10), particularly in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific oceans. Thus these results point towards the possibility of routine decadal climate predictions. Using this method, and by considering both internal natural climate variations and projected future anthropogenic forcing, we make the following forecast:

Over the next decade, the current Atlantic meridional overturning circulation will weaken to its long-term mean; moreover, North Atlantic SST and European and North American surface temperatures will cool slightly, whereas tropical Pacific SST will remain almost unchanged.

Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7191/abs/nature06921.html

Eye On, that’s one of the most concise explanations I’ve read of the relationship between the solar cycle and temperature.

The only thing I would add is the apparent relationship between the length of a cycle and the amplitude (i.e., number of sunspots) for the next cycle. It takes a lot of energy to form a sun spot. If the sun is magnetically active, sun spots are a convenient proxy we can observe (and have observed for centuries). Historically, long solar cycles (SCs) tend to be followed by weak ones (i.e., few sunspots) and short cycles by strong ones.

We are nearing the end of SC 23. SC 22, which preceded it, was a relatively short cycle. So SC 23 should have been active with a strong, consistent solar wind, less low level cloud formation, and higher temperatures. It was.

Solar cycles overlap, so while 23 has yet to end, 24 has begun. Usually, it takes a year or more for a SC to end once we’ve seen the first activity from the following SC (The solar minimum is the point where the combined sunspot activity from the overlapping cycles is lowest).

SC 23 should have ended a year ago. SC 24’s first sunspot was called in January. This means that 23 may last through 2008 and into 2009. It could be the longest SC in a century.

If the relationship holds, SC 24 should be weak, resulting in less sunspot activity, less solar wind, more low level cloud formation, and colder temperatures. So far, 24 has started anemically and may very well be the weakest SC in living memory.

As some other posters have noted, buy firewood.

But what is the impact? Warmer temperatures are much better for humanity. Frankly, we should welcome the prospect of global warming as a time of unusual prosperity. Mankind has always been good at adapting to climate. Otherwise, few would live in Phoenix or Las Vegas.

Cooling means reduced growing seasons and less crop production. Historically, colder periods have been a time of hardship. Given that we’ve already got problems because we’re burning food as part of a wealth transfer to ADM and the midwestern farm vote, it’s time to dump the biofuel subsidies and turn loose the wildcatters.

Ironically, one of the saving graces may be an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. CO2 is far from a pollutant. It’s a by-product of life. We exhale it with every breath.

It’s also a fertilizer. Greenhouses set their CO2 levels at 1000 ppm for greater plant production. Atmospheric CO2 is currently well below 400 ppm.

If we’re entering a phase of solar induced cooling, we need all the atmospheric CO2 we can get to induce greater agricultural production during shorter growing seasons. Here, mother nature will fight us. The oceans are big CO2 sinks that absorb CO2 when they cool and release it when the warm. Fortunately, there’s a lot of mass in the oceans and it takes them a long time to react. When they cool, they will absorb more CO2, pulling it from the atmosphere.

Someday school kids will study the early 21st century and laugh about the stupidity of people the way we laugh about flat earthers and the consensus scientific view that the earth was the center of the universe.

I don’t worry about the climate, only the climate crusaders. Enviromarxism will cause far more misery than mild warming.

Thanks for the additional information. But we should also point out that there is very little evidence in the geologic record of CO2 ever being the cause of global warming. In fact, there were several periods in Earth's history when CO2 levels were many times what they are now. One of these periods (about 450 million years ago) the level was estimated at over 10 times today's level. And it was during an ice age!

"The above chart shows the range of global temperature through the last 500 million years. There is no statistical correlation between the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through the last 500 million years and the temperature record in this interval. In fact, one of the highest levels of carbon dioxide concentration occurred during a major ice age that occurred about 450 million years ago. Carbon dioxide concentrations at that time were about 15 times higher than at present.":
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=010405M

FWD:

So, greenhouse [effect] is all about carbon dioxide, right?

Wrong. The most important players on the greenhouse stage are water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide has been increased to about 0.038% of the atmosphere (possibly from about 0.028% pre-Industrial Revolution) while water in its various forms ranges from 0% to 4% of the atmosphere and its properties vary by what form it is in and even at what altitude it is found in the atmosphere.

In simple terms the bulk of Earth's greenhouse effect is due to water vapor by virtue of its abundance. Water accounts for about 90% of the Earth's greenhouse effect -- perhaps 70% is due to water vapor and about 20% due to clouds (mostly water droplets), some estimates put water as high as 95% of Earth's total tropospheric greenhouse effect (e.g., Freidenreich and Ramaswamy, 'Solar Radiation Absorption by Carbon Dioxide, Overlap with Water, and a Parameterization for General Circulation Models,' Journal of Geophysical Research 98 (1993):7255-7264).

The remaining portion comes from carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, ozone and miscellaneous other 'minor greenhouse gases.' As an example of the relative importance of water it should be noted that changes in the relative humidity on the order of 1.3-4% are equivalent to the effect of doubling CO2.

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/ ______________________________________________

FWD:

Water Vapor Rules the Greenhouse System

Water vapor constitutes Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect (4). Interestingly, many 'facts and figures' regarding global warming completely ignore the powerful effects of water vapor in the greenhouse system, carelessly (perhaps, deliberately) overstating human impacts as much as 20-fold.

Water vapor is 99.999% of natural origin. Other atmospheric greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and miscellaneous other gases (CFC's, etc.), are also mostly of natural origin (except for the latter, which is mostly anthropogenic).

Human activites contribute slightly to greenhouse gas concentrations through farming, manufacturing, power generation, and transportation. However, these emissions are so dwarfed in comparison to emissions from natural sources we can do nothing about, that even the most costly efforts to limit human emissions would have a very small-- perhaps undetectable-- effect on global climate.

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html ______________________________________________

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