Thursday 15 April 2010

"But" Of The Day

From the BBC:

Low solar activity link to cold UK winters

The UK and continental Europe could be gripped by more frequent cold winters in the future as a result of low solar activity, say researchers. They identified a link between fewer sunspots and atmospheric conditions that "block" warm, westerly winds reaching Europe during winter months...


The second half of the article explains how this all works, it is a different mechanism to the overall rule that it's colder when sun spot activity is low (NB - more solar activity -> fewer cosmic rays -> less clouds -> warmer temperatures, and vice versa) but they both lead to the same thing. 'But' inevitably, the third sentence is as follows...

But they added that the phenomenon only affected a limited region and would not alter the overall global warming trend.

11 comments:

Macheath said...

What baffles me is the way the BBC presents this as if it's all brand new - some boffin thinks, 'Blimey, it's been a bit nippy recently; I wonder why?', toils away for months and then - Eureka! - presents us all with a newly reinvented wheel.

RantinRab said...

There's always a 'but'.

I'm just waiting for some loon to spout something about 'man made solar cooling'...

Macheath said...

RR - A few years ago, 'Horizon' did a programme on how aerosol particles from industrial pollution are causing 'global cooling' and how, without this phenomenon, we'd be heating up even faster.

Has a pleasing symmetry, don't you think?

Antisthenes said...

In recent history I believe a similar phenomena occurred during a period of low solar activity and Northern Europe experienced a mini ice age. There is a famous painting by Hogath I think it is by him showing people ice skating on a frozen Thames.

Time to put more coal on the fire?

JuliaM said...

Time to put more ecowarriors on the fire!

Mark Wadsworth said...

MacH, the second article I linked to is from 2002. And yes, pre-1980 when temperatures had been falling slightly for decades, this was partly blamed on soot in the atmosphere etc (and probably rightly so). So we fixed the soot problem, and...

RR, do you think they'd have the nerve?

A, as I said, this is a slightly different mechanism, but comes to the same thing.

JM, nah, stick 'em in four-by-fours and tell them to drive round all day.

View from the Solent said...

".. the phenomenon only affected a limited region and would not alter the overall global warming trend."

Regardless of whether or not there is/is not an effect, which part of the earth is not affected by solar activity then?

dearieme said...

In a blog comment yesterday I suggested that the Global Warmmongers will eventually try to wriggle out of criticism over a cooling spell by blaming it all on volcanoes. And today.........

neil craig said...

WatsUpWithThat brings up the point that the person saying this for the BBC, in 2007, did an "investigation" into the statements in the Breat Global Warming Swindle & found, astonishingly enough, that the government alarmists were absolutely right & there was "no Sun Link to global warming". This was reported by the BBC who unaccountably now omit any mention of it.

Catastrophic Warming is clearly a sunk ship.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/14/lockwood-demonstrates-link-between-low-sun-and-low-temps/

James Higham said...

I made a startling discovery recently too. Lack of sunshine leads to cold winters as well.

DBC Reed said...

What did I tell you? Man made global warming is a factor in a tremendous mix ,all of which I cannot remember off the top of my head.
There was some South American scientist on the telly explaining his work to find correlations between the height/depth of the Amazon and whatever.Guess what: there was no connexion with sun spots (in the classical Herschel and Jevons manner)but he did find the sun got brighter and hotter periodically like turning up a gas fire.
Don't forget volcanoes.