In the paper: 2014,
Solar Physics,
289, 3961,
Chapman & de Toma & Cookson report an
observed decline in the amplitude of the peaks of the solar cycle between Cycles 22 and Cycle 24.
[[ Incidentally, this is a well-respected journal which is known for stringent peer review.
There also exist many "free public access" science journals that are funded by the researchers themselves paying for their paper to be put in, and many of these journals have turned out to be corrupt, in that they claim to be peer-reviewed but in fact they are willing to publish just about anything. ]]
I quote here the abstract of this paper:
There has been much speculation about the extended minimum between Solar Cycles 23 and 24. Cycle 24 itself has been unusually weak compared with recent cycles. We present quantitative evidence for the weakness of both Cycles 23 and, particularly, 24. The data are objective indices derived from precision photometric images obtained on a daily basis at the San Fernando Observatory. These data form the longest running, homogeneous photometric record known to us. We show sunspot areas from red images and facular/network areas from Ca ii K-line images. Spot and facular area are a simple and direct measurement of the strength of solar activity. The data clearly show the decline in the amplitude of sunspot maxima for Cycles 23 and 24 compared with Cycle 22. The relative amplitudes of mean spot area for Cycles 22 through 24 are 1.0, 0.74, and 0.37, respectively. There is also an indication that the facular-to-spot area ratio has increased in Cycle 24.
Here is the paper itself:
_________________Solar cycle amplitude.pdf
Of course there does not have to be any causal relation whatsoever between declining solar activity and the current decline in the rate of global temperature increase, though this question does deserve investigation. The results published in this paper suggest to me that global climatic modelling is a complex problem with large numbers of
incompletely-understood components that must be accounted for.
Apparently, if I say that climate scientists don't fully understand every aspect of global climate, that makes me some sort of heretic who should be shouted down and even called a scientific ignoramus. I have no trouble accepting the broad thrust of the most recent IPCC report, but I think that a little more humility should be shown in the face of a complex problem in which even the best predictive models for Global Temperatures produce
very large discrepancies between the various forecast temperatures for each and every year in the 21st Century.
cheers,
Robert