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Abstracts of American Geophysical Union annual meeting, San Francisco Dec., 2008Global, cyclic, decadal, climate patterns can be traced over the past millennium in glacier fluctuations, oxygen isotope ratios in ice cores, sea surface temperatures, and historic observations. The recurring climate cycles clearly show that natural climatic warming and cooling have occurred many times, long before increases in anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 levels. The Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age are well known examples of such climate changes, but in addition, at least 23 periods of climatic warming and cooling have occurred in the past 500 years. Each period of warming or cooling lasted about 25-30 years (average 27 years). Two cycles of global warming and two of global cooling have occurred during the past century, and the global cooling that has occurred since 1998 is exactly in phase with the long term pattern. Global cooling occurred from 1880 to ~1915; global warming occurred from ~1915 to ~1945; global cooling occurred from ~1945-1977;, global warming occurred from 1977 to 1998; and global cooling has occurred since 1998. All of these global climate changes show exceptionally good correlation with solar variation since the Little Ice Age 400 years ago.
Solar Influence on Recurring Global, Decadal, Climate Cycles Recorded by Glacial Fluctuations, Ice Cores, Sea Surface Temperatures, and Historic Measurements Over the Past Millennium
Easterbrook, Don J., Dept. of Geology, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225
The University of Utah Seismograph Stations reports that a notable swarm of earthquakes has been underway since December 26 beneath Yellowstone Lake in Yellowstone National Park, three to six miles south-southeast of Fishing Bridge, Wyoming. This energetic sequence of events was most intense on December 27, when the largest number of events of magnitude 3 and larger occurred.
Comment: NOAA's Climate Prediction Center updated its ENSO data and prediction yesterday December 29, 2008. The La Nina conditions that were questionable a month ago have strengthened and current forecasts now call for La Nina to dominate well into 2009.
The report can be found here.
In addition to the cooling influence of La Nina, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is still strongly negative (in a cool phase) as can be seen here
And this recent article reveals the virtual absence of sunspots for the past year.
2008 sets record for days with no sunspots.