“The Earth could be headed for a ‘mini ice age’ researchers have warned. A new study claims to have cracked predicting solar cycles – and says that between 2020 and 2030 solar cycles will cancel each other out. This, they say, will lead to a phenomenon known as the ‘Maunder minimum’ – which has previously been known as a mini ice age when it hit between 1646 and 1715, even causing London’s River Thames to freeze over”, writes the Daily Mail.
THE MAUNDER MINIMUM
The Maunder Minimum (also known as the prolonged sunspot minimum) is the name used for the period starting in about 1645 and continuing to about 1715 when sunspots became exceedingly rare, as noted by solar observers of the time. It caused London’s River Thames to freeze over, and ‘frost fairs’ became popular.
This period of solar inactivity also corresponds to a climatic period called the ‘Little Ice Age’ when rivers that are normally ice-free froze and snow fields remained year-round at lower altitudes.
There is evidence that the Sun has had similar periods of inactivity in the more distant past, Nasa says. The connection between solar activity and terrestrial climate is an area of on-going research. Some scientists hypothesize that the dense wood used in Stradivarius instruments was caused by slow tree growth during the cooler period.
Instrument maker Antonio Stradivari was born a year before the start of the Maunder Minimum.
Maunder Minimum (also known as the prolonged sunspot minimum) is the name used for the period starting in about 1645 and continuing to about 1715 when sunspots became exceedingly rare, as noted by solar observers of the time. It is 172 years since a scientist first spotted that the Sun’s activity varies over a cycle lasting around 10 to 12 years. But every cycle is a little different and none of the models of causes to date have fully explained fluctuations.
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