Earth Heading For ‘Mini Ice Age’ Within 15 Years

Prediction – Earth to Face a New `Mini Ice Age’

Scientist predict that the Earth would face a new `mini ice age’ in the next 15 years which would cause severe cold winters during which rivers like the Thames may tend to freeze. As Antarctic Vortex grips Australia, solar researchers from the University of Northumbria in UK state that solar activity is set to drop by 60 percent by 2030.

Professor Valentina Zharkova, research head, informed that the fluid movements in the Sun, which is believed to create 11 year cycles in the weather would cancel each other out causing a dramatic temperature drop which would lead to a weather phenomenon known as a `mini ice age which had earlier hit between 1645 and 1715. The discoveries are established on new model that the scientist believes produces `unprecedentedly accurate prediction of irregularities’, within the Sun’s 11-year heartbeat.

According to Professor Zharkova, he states that between the cycle 2030 and around 2040, two waves will mirror each other exactly, peaking at the same time though in opposite hemispheres of the sun. Their interaction would be disruptive or they will nearly cancel each other and predicts that this would lead to the properties of a `Maunder Minimum’.

Maunder Minimum – Europe/North America Experienced Cold Winters (1645-1715)

Maunder Minimum was the name that was given when Europe and North America had experienced very cold winters, during the period between 1645 and 1715 and during that time the Thames River in England was said to be frozen over. Research findings were presented at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno, Wales and also published in the papers of the Royal Astronomical Society.

This surprising news has been given as the Antarctic Vortex whirled into eastern Australia bringing about a freak phenomenon known as thunder-snow. The tropical style thunderstorms, accompanied by heavy snowfalls thundered through the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney and town as far as Orange recently. Several areas of the country are expecting destructive winds, which could reach blizzard intensity of 90km/h while the snow tends to continue to fall and the big freeze begins to bite.

Snow that falls as the big freeze tend to start to affect the nation’s south east where sub-zero temperature are predicted in some places for much of the coming week. According to the Bureau Meteorology, in the coming days, it is said that strong cold front with low to the south would be moving through the state, bringing in cold vigorous, westerly winds.

Sun’s Activity Differs – Cycle of 10 to 12 Years

Scientists had first discovered that the sun’s activity differs over a cycle of 10 to 12 years in 1843. Variations within that cycle became difficult to predict though several solar physicists were aware that the fluctuation were due to a dynamo of moving fluid deep within the sun. Professor Zharkova’s team found that adding a second dynamo near the surface of the sun created a far more accurate model.

They found magnetic waves in two various layers of the sun’s interior that varied between the northern and the southern hemispheres of the sun.According to Professor Zharkova, on combining both waves together and comparing the real data for the current solar cycle, they observed that the predictions showed an accuracy of 97 percent. The magnetic wave patterns indicated that there would be few sunspots in the next two solar cycles. Cycle 25 that peaks in 2022 and Cycle 26, between 2030 and 2040 will be having both a significant reduction in solar activity.