National Geographic News, Reporting Your World Daily

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Photo: Sun Oddly Quiet -- Hints at Next "Little Ice Age"?


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In July 2000 the sun was at a peak in activity, as seen by the speckling of sunspots spied by NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft. But the sun was a blank disk in March 2009, when it was the quietest it has been since the 1950s.

The current sunspot deficit has caused some scientists to recall the Little Ice Age of the early 1600s and late 1700s, a prolonged, localized cold spell linked to a decline in solar activity.

Images courtesy SOHO, the EIT Consortium, and the MDI Team