Solar activity is predicted to drop by 60 percent in 2030.
A new model that predicts the solar cycles more accurately than
ever before has suggested that solar magnetic activity will drop by 60 percent
between 2030 and 2040, which means in just 15 years’ time, Earth could sink
into what researchers are calling a mini ice age.
Such low solar activity has not been seen since the last mini ice
age, called the Maunder Minimum, which plunged the northern hemisphere in
particular into a series of bitterly cold winters between 1645 and 1715.
The prediction is based on what’s known as the Sun’s '11-year
heartbeat'. The Sun’s magnetic activity is not the same year in year out, it
fluctuates over a cycle that lasts between 10 and 12 years. Ever since this was
discovered 172 years ago, scientists have struggled to predict what each cycle
will look like.
But just last week at the National Astronomy Meeting in Wales,
mathematics professor Valentina Zharkova from Northumbria University in the UK
has presented a new model that can forecast what these solar cycles will look
like based on the dynamo effects at play in two layers of the Sun. Zharkova
says she can predict their influence with an accuracy of 97 percent.
What exactly are these so-called dynamo effects? They’re part of
a geophysical theory that explains how the motion of Earth’s outer core moves
conducting material, such as liquid iron, across a weak magnetic field to
create an electric current. This electric current also interacts with the fluid
motion below the surface of Earth to create two magnetic fields along the axis
of its rotation.
When Zharkova’s model applied this theory to the Sun, it drew its
predictions assuming that there are dynamo effects in two subterranean layers -
one deep down in the convection zone, and another up near the surface, each
fluctuating between the northern and southern hemispheres.
