GLOBAL COOLING

Is 'global cooling' on the way? Lake sediment proves sun cooled earth 2,800 years ago - and it could happen again soon

• Lake sediment proves 'solar minimum' caused 200 years of cooling 2,800 years ago
• New minimum due soon - after this year's increased sunspot activity
• Sun's activity CAN cause changes in Earth's climate, claim scientists
• May throw predictions of global warming out of whack

By Rob Waugh

When the Greek poet Homer was writing The Odyssey around 2,800 years ago, the Earth went through an abrupt period of cooling, caused by the sun - and the same could happen again soon.

Scientists at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences analysed lake sediment in Lake Meerfelder Maar, and found direct evidence of a sudden cooling caused by a 'solar minimum'.

Some scientists suspect that the current period of high solar activity - including increased sunspots and solar storms thsi year - will be followed by a 'minimum' period, which could even cause an Ice Age.

f the GFZ research is correct, a new 'solar minimum' could have a direct impact on Earth's climate - cooling our planet drastically, and knocking the predictions of global-warming alarmists out of whack.

Dr Achim Brauer of the GFZ said,'An abrupt cooling in Europe together with an increase in humidity and particularly in windiness coincided with a sustained reduction in solar activity 2800 years ago.'

Brauer's measurement's of lake sediments allow 'a precise dating even of short-term climate changes.'

The 'Homeric Minimum' - the solar minimum that coincided with the famous poet's lifetime - caused a cool period that lasted 200 years.

'Scientists from the German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ in collaboration with Swedish and Dutch colleagues provide evidence for a direct solar-climate linkage on centennial timescales,' say the researchers.

'Using the most modern methodological approach, they analysed sediments from Lake Meerfelder Maar, a maar lake in the Eifel/Germany, to determine annual variations in climate and solar activity.'

Suggestions that the sun might affect climate so profoundly are controversial.

Mankind’s use of fossil fuels has led to billions of tons of carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere, triggering global temperature rises from which experts believe we will take millennia to recover. That is the consensus view.

Three centuries ago similar changes in the Sun were linked to a period of almost unprecedented cold, known as the ‘little ice-age’ - a time when the ice on London’s River Thames was regularly a foot deep and when thousands went hungry because crops froze in the fields.

 

The link between Solar ‘moods’ and the weather down here on Earth was first noticed in the 1970s, when the American astronomer Jack Eddy noticed a strong correlation between historic weather records and contemporaneous accounts of Solar activity, most notably the long record of sunspots published a century before by the astronomer Edward Maunder.

Eddy noticed that a ‘quiet’ Sun correlates with cold weather and a manic phase means warmer conditions.

His best evidence for this link comes from the last time the Sun went to sleep, the so-called ‘Maunder Minimum’ period from 1645 to 1715.

During this period and for about a century either side, much of Europe and North America suffered a succession of bitterly cold winters and damp washout summers - the ‘little ice age’