Mark Paquette, who is a new colleague of mine here at AccuWeather.com came to me last month and wanted to get involved with the global warming blog. In addition to being one of our new early morning forecasters, Mark has a particularly strong interest in climate change. Mark will pop in from time to time with a blog, especially during one of the weekend days when I normally would not post anything new. Brett.

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As a new meteorologist at AccuWeather I am not going to be pretend to be an expert at global warming, or maybe more appropriately named, climate change. This subject has interested me since grade school, and I even considered studying it at the graduate school level.

I recently came across a research report written by Don J. Easterbrook, a Professor of Geology at Western Washington University that explains his theory of global cooling, which he says began in 2002, was interupted by the El-Nino of 2005, and will continue, by his projections until 2040. For the whole time period of 2002-2040, he expects a drop in temperature of about 0.5 C. Curiously, his projection is only for the Northern Hemisphere. This article stood out to me simply because since the late 80's, 1988 in particular, we have been bombarded with media stories warning of the dangers of global warming. Our more experienced readers may remember that in the 70's, there were many an article about global cooling and even an impending return to ice age conditions. So, an article on global cooling in this day and age, which may be seen as being more appropriate 30 years ago, piqued my interest. Also interesting is his explanation why he has the earth cooling. There have been recent studies and observations of a lack of (or at least not as may) sunspots. Professor Easterbrook says that the recent lack of sunspot activity may be part of a bigger trend of lower sunspot activity ( possibly similiar to what happened in the Maunder Minimum from about 1600-1700 AD where there was almost a complete lack of sunspots altogether), and lower sunspot activity signifies a slight reduction in the amount of energy being put out by the sun, and thus received by the earth. This was at leat part of the reason (if not the main reason) for the "Little Ice Age" that occured from about 1300-1800 AD. So the Professor basically says, if cooling happened back then from a decrease in the amount of the sun's energy hitting the earth, why couldn't it happen now? I personally think this is a possibility, the scientific reasoning looks sound, but I question where he gets his temperatures. The earth has been cooling since 2002, only briefly interrupted by El Nino in 2005? I'm not sure about that. How does he get his temperatures for his projection? I think his theory needs to be looked at, but his methods may need to be scrutinized more closely.

Easterling also has a number of graphs in his report.