Swedish geophysicist Nils-Axel Mörner, in a new peer-reviewed paper, predicts that by the year 2050, we will be experiencing a cold period similar to the “Little Ice Age” that enveloped the world between about 1550 AD and 1850 AD. During that time, global temperatures were up to 2 degrees F colder than now and that chill had a significant effect on food production.

The paper’s abstract reads:

At around 2040-2050 we will be in a new major Solar Minimum. It is to be expected that we will then have a new “Little Ice Age” over the Arctic and NW Europe. The past Solar Minima were linked to a general speeding-up of the Earth’s rate of rotation. This affected the surface currents and southward penetration of Arctic water in the North Atlantic causing “Little Ice Ages” over northwestern Europe and the Arctic.

The contention of the paper is that solar cycles affect ocean circulation in the Arctic and that during solar minima, this change in circulation causes cooling. “Variations in Solar activity lead to changes in the Solar Wind and in Solar irradiance, both of which may affect Earth’s climate. The variations in irradiance are known to be small or even minute. The variations in Solar Wind are large and strong, via the interaction with the Earth’s magnetosphere, it affects Earth’s rate of rotation, by that forcing several different terrestrial variables like the Gulf Stream beat in the North Atlantic.”

Read the 13-page paper here.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 6th, 2011 at 9:21 am and is filed under Climate change. Tags for this post: Climate change, global cooling, global warming, Little Ice Age, solar cycles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.