Another Grand Solar Minimum Would Hardly Matter

While AGW skeptics are currently obsessed with the relatively high Arctic sea ice extent, a year or so ago they were obsessed with the low solar activity. Solar activity has since picked up, so I guess they have shelved that idea for the next 11 years.

In any case, what if the Sun were headed into another grand minimum, like the Maunder Minimum that spawned the Little Ice Age? It wouldn't matter much, says a new paper by Feulner and Rahmstorf -- a future temperature offset of just -0.3°C in the year 2100:

On the effect of a new grand minimum of solar activity on the future climate on Earth

Georg Feulner

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany

Stefan Rahmstorf

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany

The current exceptionally long minimum of solar activity has led to the suggestion that the Sun might experience a new grand minimum in the next decades, a prolonged period of low activity similar to the Maunder minimum in the late 17th century. The Maunder minimum is connected to the Little Ice Age, a time of markedly lower temperatures, in particular in the Northern hemisphere. Here we use a coupled climate model to explore the effect of a 21st-century grand minimum on future global temperatures, finding a moderate temperature offset of no more than −0.3°C in the year 2100 relative to a scenario with solar activity similar to recent decades. This temperature decrease is much smaller than the warming expected from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the century.

Citation: Feulner, G., and S. Rahmstorf (2010), On the effect of a new grand minimum of solar activity on the future climate on Earth, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L05707, doi:10.1029/2010GL042710.