The Ice Age Cometh?
Recent media reports have claimed that a drop in solar activity will lead to a mini-Ice Age within the next 15 years. Unfortunately, even press reports from science-related media such as Science Daily , have been riddled with errors. Let's get the biggest one out of the way first. Zharkova et al. ( 2015 ) did not predict a new Little Ice Age (LIA). What they did was use principle component analysis to detect and model magnetic waves within the sun. They found that there were two such waves, each with an 11-year cycle, that either interfered with each other when sunspot activity was low or magnified each other when sunspot activity was high. They then ran their statistical model ahead to make a prediction for the next solar cycle and found that their model predicts that the waves should cancel each other out, resulting in their subsequent prediction that solar activity should drop to levels not seen since the Maunder Minimum. That bit about the Maund...