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They had no evidence whether this could be true, and said nothing about whether the Maunder minimum was related to a long cold spell known in Europe and other parts of the northern hemisphere as the Little Ice Age.

How strong a connection there is between a small ice age and a Maunder Minimum? "Not as strong a connection, as you might think," said Hill. "The Little Ice Age lasted for hundreds of years actually, of which only a small segment of the Maunder Minimum. My opinion is that it's only an anecdotal connection without a lot of scientific background behind it."

Some commentators have argued that the cooling influence could potentially lower sunspot activity is warming the lift due to human activities that produce greenhouse gases causing climate warming. Hill denied this. "In my opinion it is a big leap to an abrupt global warming because the connections between solar activity and climate are still poorly understood very," he said.

Across the sun 's 11-year solar cycle varies the entire solar energy reaches the earth, by less than 0.1%, and even chill over the period since the Little Ice Age, did not climb as more solar yield about 0.12%, according to the 2007 IPCC report. Subsequent assessments Judith Lean of the Naval Research Laboratory and others have the solar contribution of the 20th Century warming at 10% or less bound.

Mike Lockwood, a professor of space physics at the University of Reading, said: "Our research on the behavior of the sun over the past 9000 years is based shows that there is indeed an 8% chance of return we will order on the minimum conditions Maunder the next 40 years. But there is absolutely no evidence that this may cause an ice age, and given the observed and predicted increases in greenhouse gases, we find it not as slow global warming to do a little \. "