The announcement by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) had shifted to its cool phase (Fig. 1) is right on schedule as predicted by past climate and PDO changes.…

easterbrook_projection.png

If we are lucky, this PDO will be a short event. 2-4 years. If we are unlucky, and it is the “full Monty” phase switch at 20-30 years as Easterbrook suggests, we may be in for extended cooler times. This may result in some significant extended worldwide effects, notably on agriculture.

UPDATE! Professor Easterbrook adds in comments:

“The projected warming from ~2040 to ~2070 is NOT driven by CO2, it’s merely a continuation of warm/cool cycles over the past 500 years, long before man-made CO2 could have been a factor. We’ve been warming up from the Little Ice Age at rate of about 1 degree or so per century and the 2040-70 projection is simply a continuation of non-AGW cycles.

An interesting question is the similarity between what we are seeing now with sun spots and global temperature and the drop into the Little Ice Age from the Medieval Warm Period. Could we be about to repeat that? Only time will tell–We might see a more pronounced cool period like the 1880 to 1910 cool cycle (when many temp records were set) or a milder cooling like the 1945-1977 cool cycle. In any case, the setting up of the cool phase of the PDO seems to suggest cooler times ahead, not the catastrophic warming predicted by IPCC and Al Gore.”

http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/more-on-the-pdo-shift-cited-by-nasa/

May result in effects on agriculture? Now I live in Canada that fears global warming because no one can farm south of here apparently how could a cooling spell possibly be bad for our farming? Is it time for Ragnarok? If you look it’s still warmer than the 60’s, no cause for alarm, so some people will not like to hear this.