27 Oct 09 - Observations of the Sun show that what lies ahead “is not catastrophic warming, but a global, and very prolonged, temperature drop,” says Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research laboratory of the Pulkovo Observatory.

In each of 18 deep minima of solar activity of the Maunder Minimum type for the last 7500 years, there have been periods of deep temperature decline, while in the periods of high sunspot maxima, there have been periods of global warming.

“Such changes in the climate of the Earth could be caused only by lasting and significant changes in the Sun,” says Dr. Abdussamatov, “because there was absolutely no industrial effect on nature in those times.”

“The most significant solar event in the 20th century was the extraordinarily high level and the prolonged increase in the intensity of the energy radiated by the Sun.

“A similar rise in solar radiation has not been observed in at least 700 years. However, its consequence - the global warming of climate that followed - was not an anomalous event in the life of the Earth.

“Climate on the Earth has periodically changed, and our planet has repeatedly survived global warming, comparable to that of the current period, after each of which episodes the temperature has dropped deeply. Neither temperature drop nor warming lasts longer than the 200-year fluctuations of size and luminosity of the Sun.

"The intense solar energy flow radiated since the beginning of the 1990's is slowly decreasing and, in spite of conventional opinion, there is now an unavoidable advance toward a global temperature decrease, a deep temperature drop comparable to the Maunder minimum," says Dr. Abdussamatov.

Read that again. "A deep temperature drop comparable to the
Maunder minimum." That was the coldest part of The Little Ice Age!

“Consequently, we should expect not the catastrophic melting of ice, but, on the contrary, the gradual growth of ice caps at the poles. It has already begun: the area of ice cover in the Arctic in September 2008 (4.52 mln. km2), in spite of all forecasts, rose by 390 thousand km2 above that of a year ago (when it was 4.13 mln. km2) and in the subsequent four months it grew substantially further."

See entire article, entitled Sun Defines The Climate,
by Habibullo Abdussamatov, Dr. Sc.
Head of Space research laboratory of the Pulkovo Observatory,
Head of the Russian/Ukrainian joint project Astrometria
(translated from Russian by Lucy Hancock)