Sunspots and Global Cooling Are Unrelated

Contrary to some reports currently making the rounds in the media, a reduced level of solar activity will not produce global cooling. Researchers say that the number of sunspots on the star has little to do with the mean global temperatures here on Earth.

Some began peddling this idea when solar physicists recently announced that the Sun may be heading towards a period of very low activity. The star has had similar bouts of inactivity in the past, and only very few of those events could be connected to significant global cooling.

Those who fear that a new “Little Ice Age” might be upon so should take heart. There is absolutely no reason to believe that based on evidence scientists have so far. And these records extend for centuries.

Unfortunately, this also means that there would be no quick solution for global warming. This would have been one of the advantages of such an occurrence. Cooling temperatures would have contributed to the stabilization of glaciers and ice sheets around the world.

Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) climatologist Michael Mann says that the cooling effect the Sun's lack of activity will cause will probably cover “only a couple tenths of a degree Celsius. It’s a tiny blip on the radar screen if you’re looking at the driving factors behind climate change.”

Most media outlets that covered the news concerning the Sun's upcoming behavior sought to bring the Little Ice Age of the mid-17th and early 18th centuries back into focus. The phenomenon mainly affected northern Europe.

But experts say that there is no chance of this small ice age, called the Maunder Minimum, returning to haunt us again. In fact, it's very likely that the Sun's lack of sunspots will have no effect on the planet's climate whatsoever, Wired reports.

“Global mean temperatures in the year 2100 would most likely be diminished by about 0.1°C,” experts Georg Fuelner and Stefan Rahmstorf, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, wrote in a 2010 Geophysical Research Letters study

In the worst-case scenario, they add, the cooling effect will amount to a maximum of just 0.3 degrees Celsius, or about 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit. “A new Maunder‐type solar activity minimum cannot offset the global warming caused by human greenhouse gas emissions,” they say.

“The example I like to use is that greenhouse warming right now is the equivalent of 2 watts of power illuminating every square meter of the Earth’s surface. It’s like a Christmas tree light over every square meter,” Mann says.

“By mid-century, it will be closer to 4 watts. The maximum impact factor of the sun is 0.2 watts per meter squared,” the famous expert concludes.