Is an Ice Age on our doorstep?

During a period in the World's history known as the 'Little Ice Age', the European continent experienced a roughly 500 year long period of wildly unstable weather. Starting around 1300 AD and ending in the early 1800's, a series of droughts, flooding rains, hot summers followed by intensely cold winters played havoc on hundreds of thousands of peasants who lived on the brink of starvation even in the best of times! It was during that period of time that early astronomers noticed that the sun was going through a very long period of time with few if any sunspots visible. The term Maunder Minimum, also known as the "prolonged sunspot minimum", was coined for the period starting in about 1645 and continuing to about 1715 when sunspots became exceedingly rare. And while the records from that time are scattered, some scientists such as Professor V. Zharkova of Northumbria University believe that such extended periods of inactivity, similar to the more recent 'Dalton Minimum', that come as part of a long term solar cycle may be happening again! Dr. Zharkova has even gone as far as to predict another 'ice age' starting as early as 2020!

While many scoff at such a zany prediction, others are taking her thinking more seriously. They point to the fact that the warmth of recent centuries form just a brief respite in the larger scope of a planet that has been more often frozen than not. They also point to the fact that the sun has been acting very strangely for a number of years now; exhibiting behavior that is way outside of the norm! As of this post, we are currently more than seven years into Solar Cycle 24 and it appears the solar maximum of this cycle was reached in April 2014 during a spike in activity. Going back to 1755, there have been only a few solar cycles in the previous 23 that have had a lower number of sunspots during its maximum phase.whether that is truly significant, only time will tell.

In any case, weather watchers will be keeping a close eye on how things shake out starting with the coming winter of 2017-18!