No. It is not expected soon. The chance of hitting a new Maunder minimum over the next 40 years is only 20%.IlliniDave wrote: ↑Tue Jul 04, 2017 9:42 amThe good news perhaps is that a solar minimum is expected soon, maybe along with a mitigating effect on temperature it wall also have a mitigating effect on some of the stronger weather events.
See https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8535
Were it to happen, the mitigating effect is small---keeping in mind that it will be mitigating a baseline distribution of extreme weather that's worse than today resulting in a "slightly less worse" than "worse than today" outcome.
Under RCP8.5 (business as usual), the likely range in year 2100 is 2.6--4.8C (global average) above the global average for 1986-2005. If a new Maunder Minimum like solar minimum was reached, the effect would be to shift that range down -0.1 to -0.3 on average which is only a small amount relative to the CO2 driven increase. Another way of putting it is that given the 1/5 chance that the sun is cooperating that assistance would only delay the climate change effects by two years. Putting it in terms of the long Climate101 explanation I wrote in a previous post, the forcing from a solar minimum is now less than the forcing from the added CO2 (40%+ more than in 1750), so solar minimums no longer have much impact on Earth's climate.
Also see, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 42710/full