Thursday, July 19, 2012

30 Year Climate Forecast -- 2 Year Update.

The original Forecast was posted on 6/18/2010. Two more years of Termperature, Ocean Current patterns, and  Solar, and "weather" data have considerably confirmed and strengthened the original forecast.
In brief  - NOAA -  HCN -  SSTs show that warming peaked in 2003 and there has now been no net warming since 1997  - 15 years with no net warming and CO2 up 8.2%. Since 2003  the global temperature trend is slightly negative. The PDO remains in its negative phase while the solar magnetic field strength continues an inexorable decline ,which is looking more and more likely to be a precursor of a Maunder type minimum. Sunspot data and the relatively high GCR count for this stage in solar cycle 24 confirm the secular change in solar activity relative to the previous century.
Meanwhile the weather patterns - particularly in the US and Europe - have been as forecast in the earlier post. I repost some relevant parts below with some of  successful predictions in bold.

".  A cooler world with lower SSTs usually means a dryer world.  Thus droughts will be more likely in for example east Africa with possible monsoon failures in India. In California the PDO will mean less rainfall with more forest fires in the south. However in the Cascades and Northern Sierras snowpack could increase since more of the rain could occur as snow. Northern Hemisphere growing seasons will be shorter with occasional early and late frosts and drought in the US corn belt and in Asia repeats of the harsh Mongolian and Chinese winters of 2009 – 10 . In Europe cold snowy winters and cool cloudy summers will be more frequent .
There will be a steeper temperature gradient from the tropics to the poles so that violent thunderstorms with associated flooding and tornadoes will be more frequent in the USA, At the same time the jet stream will swing more sharply North – South thus local weather in the Northern hemisphere in particular will be generally more variable with occasional more northerly heat waves and more southerly unusually cold snaps. In the USA hurricanes may strike the east coast with greater frequency in summer and storm related blizzards more common in winter."
 
The general conclusions of the original post are confirmed
"The most general advice is that world food production will be subject to occasional serious severe restriction because of cold and drought. The use of food crops for biofuels should be abandoned and stockpiles built up for possible lean times ahead.. Northern cities and transportation systems should prepare for more frequent heavy snow and ice storms.
There is no threat from the burning of fossil fuels for the forseeable future, indeed an increase in CO2 would positively help in feeding the burgeoning population."
 
All the recent empirical data - especially the negative phase of the PDO  and the continued decline in the Solar magnetic field strength  now ( July 2012) suggest  that once solar cycle 24 starts its decline  in 2014-15  we will see an acceleration of the current slight cooling trend and that this trend  might well last for 25 -30 years. Beyond then we do not know enough at this time to make useful predictions.