According to the new study, chances that the average winter temperature will fall below 2.5°C will be around 1 in 7, assuming that all other factors, including man-made effects and El Niño, remain constant.

Put in context, the average UK winter temperature for the last 20 years has been 5.04°C. The last three winters have averaged 3.50°C, 2.53°C and 3.13°C, with 2009-10 being the 14th coldest in the last 160 years.

Lockwood says that a full-on Maunder minimum is definitely possible, but obviously – remembering the historical background to the last one – this would not mean glaciers overrunning Europe.

“Our results show that over the next fifty years there is a 10 per cent chance that temperatures will return to Maunder minimum levels. Describing the Maunder minimum as a ‘little ice age’ is somewhat misleading however,” says the prof.

“Cold winters were indeed more common during the Maunder minimum but there were also some very warm ones between them, summers were not colder, and the drop in average temperatures was not nearly as great, nor as global, as during a real ice age.”

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/06/lockwood_solar_minimum/

Also from the same article:

However many professional climate scientists do not believe that variations in the Sun have any significant effect on the Earth’s climate, and there is intense hostility to the idea from the green movement as it could de-emphasise the importance of human-driven carbon emissions.

You betcha.

The solar influence on the probability of relatively cold UK winters in the future

M Lockwood1,2, R G Harrison1, M JOwens1, L Barnard1, T Woollings1 and F Steinhilber3

http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/3/034004/pdf/1748-9326_6_3_034004.pdf

Haven’t read it yet because it looks like heavy going but here’s some of it:-

1. Introduction
The central England temperature (CET) data series [5, 6]
is the world’s longest instrumental temperature record and
extends back to 1659, around the beginning of the Maunder
minimum in solar activity. The CET covers a spatial scale
of order 300 km which makes it a ‘small regional’ climate
indicator but, to some extent, it will also reflect changes on
both regional European and hemispheric scales [7]. The mean
CET for December, January and February (DJF), TDJF, for
the recent relatively cold winters of 2008/9 and 2009/10 were
3.50 ◦C and 2.53 ◦C, respectively, whereas the mean value
(±one standard deviation) for the previous 20 winters had
been (5.04 ± 0.98) ◦C. The CET for December 2010 was
−0.6 ◦C which makes it the second coldest December in the
entire record, the only colder one being in 1889/90; however
warmer temperatures in the UK during January and February
gave a DJF mean for 2010/11 of 3.13 ◦C. The cluster of lower
winter temperatures in the UK during the last 3 years has raised
questions about the probability of more similar, or even colder,
winters occurring in the future. For example, because of the
resource implications for national infrastructure planning, the
probability of further severe winters is of central importance to
the ‘winter resilience review’ announced in the UK Parliament
by the Secretary of State for Transport in December 2010 [8].

[...]

The results for the four thresholds are shown in figure 9. The solid lines
assume the grand solar maximum ends in 2013 and the shaded
areas give the effect of an uncertainty of±2 yr around this date.
It can be seen that the probability falls over the next
few years as sunspot activity rises with the new solar cycle.
However, because of the long-term decline in FS25, the
predicted FS for the next solar minimum is lower than during
the current minimum and so the probabilities rise to greater
values. This is repeated over the subsequent three solar cycles
until the solar minima 45–55 years into the future yield peak
probabilities near 18%, 12%, 4% and 1.5%, for δTDJF below
2.5 ◦C, 1.5 ◦C, 1.0 ◦C, and 0.5 ◦C, respectively. These values
are close to the corresponding averages for the whole interval
covered by the CET dataset (1659–2010, which includes one
grand solar maximum and one grand solar minimum), which
are shown by the horizontal dashed lines in figure 9. However
they are larger than the observed occurrence frequencies for
the decade before the recent solar minimum (1998–2008, all
within the recent grand solar maximum) which are 0 for all
four δTDJF thresholds.

The ‘winter resilience review’ seems to be a sensible risk analysis after the UK got caught unprepared 2008/9 and 2009/10.

http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/solar-max-2014-then-grand-minimum-for-perhaps-100-years/

This is actually reporting independent work in this area – yet another scientist predicting a grand minimum.

Chiefio writes:

Sun Headed Into Hibernation, Solar Studies Predict

To the Climate Change Office, MfE.

Nation Geographic reports:-

“Three independent studies of the sun’s insides, surface, and upper
atmosphere all predict that the next solar cycle will be significantly
delayed—if it happens at all. Normally, the next cycle would be
expected to start roughly around 2020.

The combined data indicate that we may soon be headed into what’s
known as a grand minimum, a period of unusually low solar activity.

The predicted solar “sleep” is being compared to the last grand
minimum on record, which occurred between 1645 and 1715.

Known as the Maunder Minimum, the roughly 70-year period coincided
with the coldest spell of the Little Ice Age, when European canals
regularly froze solid and Alpine glaciers encroached on mountain
villages.”

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/06/110614-sun-hibernation-solar-cycle-sunspots-space-science/

The Washington Times EDITORIAL: An inconvenient cooling, states:-

“Cornelis de Jager, a solar physicist from the Netherlands and former
secretary-general of the International Astronomical Union, announced
that the sun is about to enter a period of extremely low sunspot
activity, which historically is associated with cooling trends. Backed
by other scientists, he predicted the “grand solar minimum” is
expected to begin around 2020 and last until 2100.”

And:-

“The ebb of solar activity is shaping up to resemble what occurred
during the Little Ice Age, the period from 1620 to 1720 when sunspot
activity diminished and temperatures dropped an estimated 3 degrees
Celsius. The era was noted for colder-than-usual winters in North
America and Europe, when rivers and canals froze over, allowing for
ice-skating and winter festivals. It also resulted in crop failure and
population displacement in northern regions such as Iceland.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jun/27/an-inconvenient-cooling/

1) Given that a cooler climate regime has already claimed hundred’s of
lives and disrupted national economies e.g. South America last winter,
will (or has) MfE CC advise(ed) the NZ government via the PMSAC of
this development and that the possibility of a sustained period of
global cooling is on the way and that it should be factored into
long-term planning and policy formation?

2) Given that cooling vs warming pits the predictions of
astrophysicists against climate scientists, will the MfE CC take an
impartial position and evaluate each case on it’s merits?

3) Given that Feulner and Rahmstorf’s finding that a new grand minimum
would produce no more than 0.3 deg C cooling by 2100 in the paper “On
the effect of a new grand minimum of solar activity on the future
climate on Earth” (2010) is based solely on climate model simulations,
what criteria will MfE CC use to evaluate the relative merits of the
predictions for warming based on global climate models and cooling
based on solar physics models?

Sincerely,

Richard Cumming

Much hilarity this end !

http://www.facebook.com/JamesHansenNZTour

(“latest State of the Climate report. Not very good news “)

Here it is:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/How-would-Solar-Grand-Minimum-affect-global-warming.html

10 reasons to be cheerful about the coming new Ice Age

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100092280/10-reasons-to-be-cheerful-about-the-coming-new-ice-age/