[The_Media_never_lie]

Just, wow!

[blam]

Eighteen Hundred And Froze To Death (The Infamous 'Year Without Summer')

[Sirius Lee]

I have a weird question: Growing up twenty years ago, did you remember the sun appearing yellow in the sky? Does it look yellow now, or does it look white to you?

[Rebelbase]

Explains the lingering winter....

[MMaschin]

Anyone curious as to how the Sun effects the climate, there is an excellent book called ‘The Chilling Stars’. It explains how it is actually the Sun, more specifically the Heliosphere that impacts the number of Galactic Cosmic Rays reaching the Earth’s lower atmosphere. And how these GCR’s create the building blocks of clouds. Less GCR’s reaching the Earth, means more clouds, greater albedo, and lower temperatures. Fewer GCR’s reaching the Earth, means fewer clouds, and lower albedo, and higher temperatures.

[Inyo-Mono]

Great post! I’m in the middle of reading a book about Captain Kidd in the 1690s and it is mentioned how cold it was in London at that time.

[familyop]

Looks, so far, like we’re in an extended solar minimum, IMO.

I’m at high elevation and altitude here, and we saw longer strings of nights -20 to -34, Fahrenheit (more fluctuations below normal temps for here). Warming from sunlight had obviously decreased drastically this winter. Increased particulate matter/water from increased, recent volcanism and fires as well as lack of solar activity contributed to cooling of exposed glazings and spaces (playing with solar heating up here). Anyway, my guess is that more folks at lower elevations will also see noticeably more cold fluctuations and more radical cold fluctuations in 3-6 years.

Another year of drought looks likely on the Rockies here, BTW (more junk in the air, generally lower wind speeds, slower evaporation, etc.).

[justa-hairyape]

Well, we did have the recent mega Japanese Earthquake. It occurred after the last solar minimum had ended and solar activity had quickly shot up to about 50 sunspots (about average). But solar magnetism got very low during the last minimum. Also, solar wind flow pressure has been dropping since 1992. So the last minimum had very low solar magnetism and very low solar wind flow pressure.

Excerpted from
Solar Update March 2012

[PapaBear3625]

The sunspot level is an indicator of the strength of the solar magnetic field. The Earth's magnetic field, generated by its rotating core, is continually passing through the solar magnetic field.

I've wondered for a long time what sort of coupling effects there are, and what the effect on the Earth would be of the Sun's field's undergoing variation. I remember my college physics, but the analysis is a bit beyond me. Any physicists on this forum care to take a shot?

[PapaBear3625]

Example of one thing I'm thinking of: NASA: Giant Breach in Earth's Magnetic Field Discovered

[ROCKLOBSTER]

but can be posited.

Boy I'll say.

[redgolum]

My father was a farmer, who took a very keen interest in solar cycles as weather predictors. He talked of this when I was a child in the early 80’s, and I can remember the talk of “Global Cooling”.

We are at or near a period of low sun spots. Things will trend cool.