The authors are research scientists with the UK Meteorological Office.
From Nature Communications:
Regional climate impacts of a possible future grand solar minimum
Abstract
Any reduction in global mean near-surface temperature due to a future decline in solar activity is likely to be a small fraction of projected anthropogenic warming. However, variability in ultraviolet solar irradiance is linked to modulation of the Arctic and North Atlantic Oscillations, suggesting the potential for larger regional surface climate effects.
Of course, like the good little warmers they are, they are not going to let pesky facts obscure their agenda.
The money quote:
The past few decades have been characterized by a period of relatively high solar activity. However, the recent prolonged solar minimum and subsequent weak solar cycle 24 have led to suggestions that the grand solar maximum may be at an end. Using past variations of solar activity measured by cosmogenic isotope abundance changes, analogue forecasts for possible future solar output have been calculated. An 8% chance of a return to Maunder Minimum-like conditions within the next 40 years was estimated in 2010. The decline in solar activity has continued, to the time of writing, and is faster than any other such decline in the 9,300 years covered by the cosmogenic isotope data. If this recent rate of decline is added to the analysis, the 8% probability estimate is now raised to between 15 and 20%.
Bundle up here folks - the last time this happened, the great rivers of Europe froze over. The presence of sunspots is a good proxy for Total Solar Irradiance and there were no sunspots during the Maunder Minimum.
More people die from extreme cold than from extreme heat.
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