On February 12, 2025, Tom Nelson conducted the above interview with solar physicist Valentina Zharkova: Grand solar minimum is underway. Below is my synopsis of lightly edited transcript excerpts from the closed captions along with key graphics in her presentation. H/T Chiefio
The full content of the video is:
Time line of segments:
0:00 – Introduction to Valentina
0:35 – Understanding the Solar Cycles
4:25 – Challenges In Measuring Sun
5:10 – Discovering The Background (magnetic fields)
6:00 – Analyzing Magnetic Waves
7:50 – Predicting Solar Activity
14;45 – Grand Solar Minimum
27:25 – Implications of the Grand Solar Minimum
37:55 – CO2 and Temperature Correlation
39:10 – Solar Cycles and Earth’s Temperature
42:45 – Solar Inertial Motion and Climate
48:30 – Future Climate Predictions
1:05:20 – Volcanic Activity and Climate
1:07:30 – Earth’s Magnetic Field
1:12:10 – Concluding Thoughts
Transcript Excerpts
Today we’re talking again about Grand solar minimum but I also speak about a little bit of solar radiation and verification of the new solar activity index we discovered with the existing one which is derived by average Sunspot number.
Understanding the Solar Cycle and Sunspots
The solar activity cycle is about 11 years and on the Sun it occurs that in the start of the cycle on the left image the sun has Southern polarity. And during the cycle this polarity slowly migrates in the opposite direction and so the next solar minimum you have polarity changed and this happens approximately every 11 years. so basically what is happening the the loops appear in the Solar surface and the occurring as the active region for forming coronal mass injections flares and different fluxes towards the Earth and other planets.
So in the past we were dealing with the sunspots. In the 18th century Wolff discovered that this Sunspot appears on this latitude 30° and migrates slowly towards the equator and basically this is the basic Solar activity index using daily average Sunspot numbers.
Why we love sunspots and why we support this for a couple of centuries is because sunspots actually are Roots which are embedded into the Photosphere (the surface layer of the Sun that gives off light). And we see them from outside with the naked eye but basically they are the places where magnetic Loops are embedded.
The problem with Sunspots is that we see only a few of them. Even with this Solar maximum there’s only a small part of the solar surface covered with them. Whatever we use to detect them, always the Sunspot index is defined by people manually. They agree from different observatories what number of sunspots which configuration Etc. So the Sunspot number changes during 11 year cycle.
Discovering The Background (magnetic fields)
So we decided to look at the background field in which these sunspots are embedded so on the top is the B is the background magnetic field measured at solar observatory in Stanford with orange. So you see clearly that the leading polarity of Sunspot always opposite to the polarity of the background magnetic field in that hemisphere. It was not only us who detected this it was others as well so it was very encouraging. We decided we can detect solar activity with much better accuracy.
The black curve is our summary modulus summary curve and the red is a sunspot number and you see that our a Vector summary Eigen vectors will represent this Solar, remembering that our index represents the magnetic field of the background Sun. In 2022 we added Cycle 24 and discovered that our curve still represents Sunspot index. At the bottom is the summary curve modulus summary curve cycle 25 where we are now, Here we see our prediction that the maximum will be actually year 23-24 and now there will be a very sharp drop of the activity, and we have two little Maxima before the minimum between cycle 25-26. Cycle 26 will be have very low amplitude, 70% lower than the previous two cycles.
So how it works. If you have two waves on the top two black waves which are running with the same amplitude but if the face difference is zero you have constructive interference. In the cycle 26 we can see the amplitudes are going opposite with the resulting amplitude becoming zero. This is what we observe on the sun and I teach my first year physics students how they interact. There’s no miracle, just basic physics of the waves and this effect called beat effect.
Implications of the Grand Solar Minimum
Now we come back to solar radiance and climate so first we now know that we entered into a grand solar minimum, the temperature started decreasing. But the problem with the grand solar minimum is that during previous Grand solar minimum, which was the Maunder minimum in 17th century, the Solar Radiance reduced by 3 watts per square meter approximately. But the temperature during Maunder minimum decreased approximately by one degree maximum.
Different investigations show slightly different variations but mostly they all reconstruct temperatures during and after the minimum to find where the surface temperature was reduced on the the globe. So this is what you see for Northern Hemisphere, this is Europe, very dark blue is reduction of temperature by one degree. And it is mostly all Europe, Russia and Siberia, and also all Northern America and Canada.
So basically this is probably we are heading towards now. We have noticed the cold flashes from the drop of the temperature that occurred because drop of abundance of ozone created by solar ultraviolet light in the stratosphere. If the solar radiation is reduced, this layer abundance of ozone is reduced and it affects planetary atmospheric waves.
In the left image Globe the stable just stream flows somewhere in this path and separate middle latitude from the north Northern latitude, but when ozone layer is reduced it causes giant Wiggles in just stream shown in the right plot called wind from arctics can now penetrate to the southern latitudes as shown on the picture. It kicks off North Atlantic oscillation and balance between permanent low pressure system near Greenland and permanent high pressure system and the South into Negative PH. It was reported 24 years ago go and it works now.
We are trying now to say that the temperature will be increasing because the sun become closer to us but the sun is very humane it gives us this grand solar minimum for 30 years to sort out our understanding how the heating comes through and then prepare for the next stage of heating which come does no matter what we do on Earth; if we stop using fuels, we crawl to the caves and start using I don’t know what energy. All people will die still the temperature will increase, it doesn’t matter what we do.
So this prediction of the anthropogenic global warming people is not working. The temperature will be increasing no matter what we do with CO2 because the increase of the temperature comes from the solar inertial motion. So this my conclusion: We had this global warming–it is real; it is not caused by humans because human only contribute 6% maximum of all CO2. And CO2 is a very good gas because it is mostly absorbed by the plants and not by humans.
Global warming is caused by this Solar inertial motion and gravitation of large planets which drag the Sun from the center Body Center closer to the planets and this causes the increase of the temperature. And the temperature as I shown in my book will increase by 2.5-3° by 25-2600 years. This is the end of the story.
TN: Thank you it sounds like we’re due for some cooling between now and 2053 but warming in general between then and 2600. I’m curious, do you think we’re going to see the temperatures freeze over at all?
Yes, I’m confident it will be freezing from 2031 to 2042 for sure. This will be the worst period of cold air and cold temperature and not only temps. Rivers and the ponds will be freezing all right and other dramatic things that might happen. It’s going to be a lot harder to grow wheat in Canada for example, I would guess during that time absolutely. In 17th century people heated their houses with their own fireplaces, now we have central heating. If we don’t have electricity even our Central heating is not working, so you need to have the portable generators run from fossil fuel or have a wood stove in your house. At that time people grew up something in their Gardens, now people don’t know how to grow up anything, so it will be really really difficult.
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