Cold - Grand Minimum - The 350 Yr. Cycle
Never mind 60 year cycles. We're on the verge of a 350 year Grand Minimum. That's really going to set the Fox among the Pigeons! And we're preparing for hot times ahead. God help us all.
This is very long video explaining work done that shows the magnetic variations of the Sun and more importantly relates these variations to our 11 year cycles, 60 year cycles, and now the 350 year cycle. This is a Grand Minimum event that can go on for decades, last seen during the Maunder Minumum period when the Thames froze over and the hemispheres were bathed in coldness. The Video is very good if you have patience to watch it. I will follow with charts and layman's descriptions to help all us us through it.
From the beginning of my search process, I've progressed through to a workable understanding of Sun cycles and have come to a true appreciation of how these cycles resonate with our own Earth by influencing our climate over short and long terms. There are blogs exploring the morphology of 11 year cycles of which we are about to enter cycle #25. This was extended to learning of the 60 year cycles bringing even higher peaks and lower troughs on 30 / 30 year trends ( ie. 3 - 11 year cycles up, then 3 - 11 year cycles down) of which we are about to move towards the next trough minimum in 2030.
Valentina Zharkova's work shows how the Sun passes through a dynamic, extremely predictable magnetic resonance over these 11, 60 and 350 year cycles. These progressions are displayed visually as paired polar Sunspots and these are in turn manifested through the solar irradiance and solar wind directed towards our Earth flows out from the Sun. Climate patterns follow as basic conditions change in the Earth's magnetosphere, rotation speed, ocean current patterns, and cloud covers - all affecting our weather.
As these lines move they develop pairs of sunspots, which display themselves on the surface in the form of bipolar pairs, sharing a common magnetic field between them.
The 11 year cycles - The image below shows how the Sun's hemispherical magnetic lines cross at regular intervals of 11 years. These crossings correspond to maximum solar activity and the appearance of maximum numbers of paired sunspots. Conversely, when they are separated to the maximum the sunspot activity is low.
Collectively these regular magnetic flux variations of the Sun form a pattern of Sunspot activity (with attendant consequences for Earth) known as the Sunspot cycles. At present we are finishing cycle 24 and are about to enter cycle 25 leading to the next 60 year minimum.
It is interesting to note that the amplitude of the above waves is not the same for each grouping. Also that the overall amplitudes are decreasing both on the bottom of the base line and on the top as each cycle unfolds. This corresponds to the curves that we have created using sunspot numbers as our variable. it is also interesting that the magnetic waves and the sunspot curves are showing a dramatic decrease since the mid 1990's and point towards a minimum set of cycles in our present and near future (as has been predicted).
The 60 year cycle - Zharakova does not dwell much on the 60 year sunspot / climate cycle, but this has been described and correlated to climate variations in several other publications more dedicated to Earth science than the strictly Sun Science that this researcher concentrated on. They are basically formed due to the patterns of the 11 year cycles - 3 cycles increasing in size, followed by 3 cycles progressively decreasing in size. These peaks and valleys are shown on the Atlantic ocean temperature variations diagram below.
The 350 year cycle - But back to the Sun. It appears the short 11 year magnetic / sunspot cycles are just part of a larger pattern of predictable waves - the 350 year cycle. When we look at the patterns of magnetic waves over long periods of time they come up with a very predictable and repetitive pattern This can be seen below.
Does this tie into the climate patterns seen throughout Earth's history and shown by this commonly used chart below?
Zharkova says that it does. The magnetic lines shown below show that the Maunder and the Dalton minimums both occurred during an extended period of low magnetic activity (low amplitude) also seen as low sunspot activity by many observers. (Zharkova states that actually measuring the magnetic flux in this way is a better tool to determine activity than sunspot counting as it is a direct measurement not reliant on observation and interpretation. )
In this image you can see the patterns clearly outlined and very repeatable in shape and size over thousands of years, along with forward projections. Each "ball" of peaks is a 350 year collection of 11 year cycles. The low amplitude areas between them is where they minimize and stay minimized for significant periods of time - decades - corresponding to cold wintry conditions on our Earth. We are about to enter cycle 25. This is the last cycle leading to the next "low zone" starting in 2030, with expectations for the long, cold conditions characterized by previous "mini ice ages" such as the Maunder and Dalton minimums.
What can we expect here on Earth? The following gives a very good description of what conditions were like during the last Maunder minimum in the 17th century. It remains to be seen if we are in for the same thing.
Is it starting?
Cycle 25 began around June , 2020 when the first sun spot was identified after around 115 days of no activity whatsoever. Electroverse has been pulishing article after article showing records being broken around the globe for unseasonably cold temperatures and presence of snow and ice. Greenland, the Arctic and Antarctic are growing, not shrinking as snow packs seem to be increasing. Canada was 135% of normal snow packs this year and we are seeing the effects in increased flooding during melt.
Noctilucent clouds are growing. These are extremely high mesospheere clouds that require extremely cold conditions to form. See article below by Dr. Roy Spencer. They are being spotted at lower and lower altitudes. They are an indication of a Sun that is not heating the upper atmospheres as well as it does during warm cycles - again an indication of cooling of the Earth.
Minimums can last a long time - in the almost perfect Cycle 24 tracing below we can see that the minimum preceding it and the minimum we are presently experiencing "tail out" over quite a long time (2 years or more). Perhaps we pay too much attention to the hot peaks and way too little to the troughs.
