Hurricane Sandy-Extreme Events and Global Cooling

By way of introduction I will repost a piece from my blog  www.climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com

"30 Year Climate Forecast -- 2 Year Update. (posted on 7/19/2012)


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"

Hurricane Sandy is a precursor of extreme events which will become more frequent as the empirically observed cooling trend accelerates  from 2014 on as solar cycle 24 winds down.It is now very clear that the generally more meridional path of the Jet Stream  on a cooling planet with the associated development of blocking highs with steep temperature and pressure gradients between the air masses is a recipe for such extreme events.The obvious climate signal is the development of  heavy snows and blizzards on the west side of this  storm.
By contrast a warming world would have a less steep temperature gradient between the tropics and the poles with a more latitudinal Jet Stream path and a more equable climate.
Another sign of cooling is  an increase in La Nina as opposed to El Nino events,.It is not perhaps merely coincidental that Sandy developed just as an El Nino event much anticipated by the AGW faithful  failed to appear. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology said on 10/29/12;

"The retreat from El Niño thresholds over the past several weeks is considered highly unusual, as September–October is typically the time when developing El Niño (or La Niña) events consolidate and mature."

Another  straw in the climate wind is the recent record extent of Antarctic sea ice. It may well be that this is one of the first signs of a major change in the climate regime as discussed recently for example by Elderfield et al      http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6095/704.abstract

The general relationships between climate and earth - solar orbital relationships and solar activity are becomong increasingly clear.The relation betwen Ice Ages  and earths eccenticity, obliquity and precession  are well documented while the lunar declination cycle is well represented in the earths temperature power spectrum.These orbital cycles are modulated by solar decadal,centennial and millenial cycles mainly , but not entirely,through changes in the solar magnetic field strength and its effects on the GCR flux and the effect of the latter on clouds and aerosols and earths albedo.The late 20th century warming can be easily accounted for by the increase in sunshine reaching the earth's surface  as shown by Wang et al.

Atmospheric impacts on climatic variability of surface incident solar radiation
K. Wang1, R. E. Dickinson2, M. Wild3, and S. Liang4
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/12/14009/2012/acpd-12-14009-2012-print.pdf

It is now clear that  anthropogenic CO2  can play only a minor role in climate change and policies to control CO2 emissions are completely irrelevant or indeed counterproductive. Hurricane Sandy does however show what may be in store and that we should consider carefully what steps need to be taken to adapt our infrastructure to more frequent extreme events and  world   food production to the likelihood of  more general cold and drought  with intermittent floods and shorter growing seasons with unseasonable frosts.