Sunspot decline could mean decades of cold UK winters

Ice-skating on the Thames to make a comeback?



As NASA notes:


In fact it used to be commonplace for people to go ice-skating on the Thames back then, something which has never happened in living memory.

American scientists at the US National Solar Observatory recently presented research which also pointed to a coming reprise of the Maunder Minimum, saying that the sunspot cycle could be entering "hibernation". However many professional climate scientists do not believe that variations in the Sun have any significant effect on the Earth's climate, and there is intense hostility to the idea from the green movement as it could de-emphasise the importance of human-driven carbon emissions.

However Professor Lockwood, while not keen on the term "little ice age", believes that solar variations can be correlated with changes in the weather, and that the UK may well be in for a long spell of much colder winters than we've been used to.



Lockwood says that a full-on Maunder minimum is definitely possible, but obviously – remembering the historical background to the last one - this would not mean glaciers overrunning Europe.



The study is published in Environmental Research Letters. ®

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