The sun has been its least active in decades. It’s actually in its dimmest phase in a hundred years.
This is causing some scientists to recall the Little Ice Age, an unusual cold spell in Europe and North America, that lasted from about 1300 to 1850. The coldest period of the Little Ice Age was between 1645 and 1715. It was linked to a deep dip in solar storms, known as the Maunder Minimum.
Access to Greenland, at that time, was largely cut off by ice. Canals in Holland routinely froze solidly. Glaciers in the Alps covered whole villages, and sea ice increased so that no open water flowed around Iceland in 1695.
For hundreds of years scientists used the number of sunspots to trace the sun's roughly 11-year cycles of activity. Sunspots indicate intense magnetic activity on the sun's surface. Solar storms send bursts of charged particles hurtling toward Earth.
Changes in the sun's activity affect earth in other ways. Research has developed a theory that the sun has a bigger influence on earth's climate than others have predicted.
That throws the sky-is-falling-down climate-position pessimists, who are anti-autos, anti-industry, and anti-industrial development. into a dither.
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