Implications of Glacial Fluctuations, PDO, NAO, and Sun Spot Cycles for Global Climate In the Coming Decades

The announcement by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) had shifted to its cool phase is right on schedule as predicted by past climate and PDO changes (Easterbrook, 2001, 2006, 2007). The PDO typically lasts 25-30 years and assures North America of cool, wetter climates during its cool phases and warmer, drier climates during its warm phases. The establishment of the cool PDO, together with similar cooling of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), virtually assures several decades of global cooling and the end of the past 30-year warm phase. It also means that the IPCC predictions of catastrophic global warming this century were highly inaccurate.

Comparisons of historic global climate warming and cooling over the past century with PDO and NAO oscillations, glacial fluctuations, and sun spot activity show strong correlations and provide a solid data base for future climate change projections. As shown by the historic pattern of PDOs over the past century and by corresponding global warming and cooling, the pattern is part of ongoing, 25–30 yr, warm/cool cycles. The global cooling phase from 1880 to 1910, characterized by worldwide advance of glaciers, was followed by a shift to the warm-phase PDO and 30 years of global warming and rapid glacier recession. The cool-phase PDO returned in ~1945, accompanied by global cooling and glacial advance for 30 years. Shift to the warm-phase PDO in 1977 initiated global warming and recession of glaciers that persisted until 1998. Recent establishment of the PDO cool phase appeared right on target and global climates can be expected to cool over the next 25-30 years. The IPCC prediction of global temperatures 1° F warmer by 2011 and 2° F by 2038 stand little chance of being correct—‘global warming' is over.