The little ice-age?

Question

I know it was the Maunder minimum that caused the little ice-age, but if the sun goes mad then calm in 11 year cycles, (i'm not sure how to ask this question), why did that maunder minimum cause a little ice-age but no other have. What was different about that particular one?

Answer 1

The Maunder Minimum was an extended period (~70 years) when the sun produced virtually no sunspots. Even during the peaks of the solar cycle, sunspot production was 10 a year or less. In a typical peak year there will be 100 or more sunspots visible at a time, and thousands in the course of the year.

Answer 2

The difficulty is that there is very little hard data from that period of the late Middle Ages. Northern Europe and the Northern Hemisphere had been in a warm period from Roman times. In fact it may have been warmer than present. This may have caused extensive melting of the North Polar Ice. An influx of fresh water may have forced the North Atlantic Conveyor ( the Gulf Stream) further south exaggerating a cooling period influenced by the Maunder minimum,
Also population drop caused by the Black Death caused extensive reforestation. The ensuing CO2 draw-down may also have had its effect.
The truth is that this event was caused by the conjunction of more than one factor, some of which are may be currently unknown.

Check out these sites on the Little Ice Age

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
http://www.agu.org/revgeophys/mayews01/node5.html
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=12455&tid=282&cid=10046

Answer 3

Yes, like Injanier has written, it's to do with the sunspots. There's a direct link with the number of sunspots and the global temperature, though CO2 enthusiasts deny this you can't dispute the evidence when you look at properly mapped graphs of sunpot activity and temperature. There were very few sunspots during that period and consequently the temp was very low also. We see the same effect during the 1900s too (but not as extreme). When there is more sunspot activity the global temp rises whether atmospheric CO2 is high or low.

Answer 4

There are a number of factors that affect solar radiation and a number of other things that affect climate.

Most like other factors brought the Earth to the brink of cooling and the Maunder minimum tipped the balance.

Answer 5

I thought you were making that up until I looked this up on Wikipedia. Don't know if it's of any use to you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_minimum.

Interesting question and I'm giving you a star for it.
Quite like your avatar too.

Answer 6

it is natural cycle of the earth.but as we are speeding things up.we dont really know what is next to hit us.