January 13, 2016
- Scotland, and in particular NE Scotland where I live, has been battered by winter storms during December 2015 and January 2016 leading to widespread flooding, destruction of property and misery for thousands of people. The Met Office warns that wide-spread frosts are now on the way.
- Government officials, while recognising a range of causes, seek to blame these events on climate change. For example Prof Jenkins, deputy Director of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology writing in the FT:
“We are absolutely convinced that there is weighty scientific evidence that the recent extreme rainfall has been impacted by climate change.”
- Looking at a range of climate drivers, my eye is drawn to the fact that sunspot cycles 17 to 23 (1934 to 2009) all had monthly sunspot numbers much greater than 100. The Sun was more active in this period than any other since records began around 1757. 1934 to 2009 is a major anomaly in solar activity and yet we tend to use this period as our benchmark for normal climate.
- Climate historian, Alastair Dawson recounts how Scotland’s climate was stormy, cold and wet for much of the 18th and 19th Centuries at a time when The Sun was less active than during most of the 20th Century. Sunspot cycle 24 began in 2009 and peaked with 100 sunspots and is now waning. It is the weakest cycle since the 1920s. Is Scotland’s climate reverting to the Hellish conditions that prevailed in centuries gone by? A number of physical mechanisms could explain this, but changes to the spectrum of radiative energy leaving the Sun is a prime underpinning candidate.
- Roger Andrews has looked at precipitation amounts in Scotland and the UK. He has found that December 2015 was in fact the wettest month in Scotland since records began in 1931, but only by a slender margin. Recent average rainfall is neither extreme, nor is it likely to have been caused by Man.
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