Let’s start with this verse from Lewis Carroll:
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
The pigs with wings thing is a done deal if you think about Airforce One. The question we seem to be getting closer to an answer for is “why the sea is boiling hot”.
We have the usual hi-tech weather guides. We have an electronic temperature sensor and I check the Wunderground (https://www.wunderground.com) 10-day forecast every day.
As always with hi-tech, it makes us dependent on them. We grow up "not needing" to know how to read the weather signs for ourselves. The neighbourhood squirrels are smarter than me about, well, a lot of things, weather being one of them :=)
I wanted to learn about weather myself and low-tech is the way to knowledge. More below
How's the weather?
The "Little Ice Age" and its included climactic minima is often partially attributed to an extreme solar minimum. In particular,
During the period 1645--1715, in the middle of the Little Ice Age, there was a period of low solar activity known as the Maunder Minimum. The Spörer Minimum has also been identified with a significant cooling period between 1460 and 1550.[69] Other indicators of low solar activity during this period are levels of the isotopes carbon-14 and beryllium-10.[70]
Now, a new model of solar behavior which is producing shockingly accurate predictions with respect to the sun's 11 year activity cycle predicts an extreme decrease in solar activity during the 2030s.
continued below the break
