Just a few centuries ago, the planet experienced a mild ice age, quaintly dubbed the Little Ice Age. Part of the Little Ice Age coincided with a period of low solar activity termed the Maunder Minimum (named after astronomer Edward Maunder). It’s believed that a combination of lower solar output and high volcanic activity were major contributors (Free 1999, Crowley 2001), with changes in ocean circulation also having an effect on European temperatures (Mann 2002). 

long-term cooling trend. 2009 saw solar output at its lowest level in over a century. However, predicting future solar activity is problematic. The transition from a period of ‘grand maxima’ (the situation in the latter 20th century) to a ‘grand minima’ (Maunder Minimum conditions) is a chaotic process and difficult to predict (Usoskin 2007).

Let’s say for the sake of argument that the sun does enter another Maunder Minimum over the 21st century. What effect would this have on Earth’s climate? Simulations of the climate response if the sun did fall to Maunder Minimum levels find that the decrease in temperature from the sun is minimal compared to the warming from man-made greenhouse gases (Feulner 2010). Cooling from the lowered solar output is estimated at around 0.1°C (with a maximum possible value of 0.3°C) while the greenhouse gas warming will be around 3.7°C to 4.5°C, depending on how much CO2 we emit throughout the 21st century.

If this is actually happening, it is happening at a much higher rate than anyone has predicted. According to my calculations it will actually happen very soon!

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