Over 2.6 million years ago, continental and polar ice sheets expanded due to extreme cold, covering parts of the Earth completely with ice. Can this period marked by bitterly cold winters, known as the Ice Age, ever happen again?
Solar researchers from the University of Northumbria in the United Kingdom warn that the Earth is heading towards a mini-Ice Age, which may happen by 2030.
The researchers claim that they have come up with a new model that yields "unprecedentedly accurate predictions" of solar cycles.
Using this model, the researchers said that fluid movements within the sun, which right now are thought to create 11-year cycles in the weather, will converge some 15 years from now, causing temperatures to drop drastically.
In a presentation to the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno, Professor Valentina Zharkova, one of the researchers, further explained that the fluid movements will "effectively cancel each other out," which will lead to a 60 percent drop in solar activity.
The result: a phenomenon characterised by low sunspot activity known as the "Maunder minimum," which will bring freezing conditions similar to those experienced in the late 17th century, when the River Thames was completely frozen.
"[In the cycle between 2030 and around 2040] the two waves exactly mirror each other – peaking at the same time but in opposite hemispheres of the sun. Their interaction will be disruptive, or they will nearly cancel each other," Zharkova said.
The professor further said that she and fellow researchers found "magnetic wave components appearing in pairs, originating in two different layers in the sun's interior."
This discovery can help create a picture of what may happen in 2030.
"Effectively, when the waves are approximately in phase, they can show strong interaction, or resonance, and we have strong solar activity. When they are out of phase, we have solar minimums. When there is full phase separation, we have the conditions last seen during the Maunder minimum, 370 years ago," Zharkova explained.
