Conventional wisdom holds that solar activity swings back and forth like a simple pendulum. At one end of the cycle, there is a quiet time with few sunspots and flares. At the other end, solar max brings high sunspot numbers and frequent solar storms.
It's a regular rhythm that repeats every 11 years. Reality is more complicated. Astronomers have been counting sunspots for centuries, and they have seen that the solar cycle is not perfectly regular. 'Whatever measure you use, solar peaks are coming down,' Richard Harrison of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire told the BBC.
'I've been a solar physicist for 30 years, and I've never seen anything like this.' He says the phenomenon could lead to colder winters similar to those during the Maunder Minimum. 'There were cold winters, almost a mini ice age. 'You had a period when the River Thames froze.'
Comment:The implications for global warming are: THAT IT'S OVER!
Solar activity is so low that we may indeed be facing an ice age in the not too distant future:
Sun's bizarre activity may trigger another ice age
New paper predicts a sharp decline in solar activity until 2100
Falling temperatures are giving climate alarmists chills
Comment: Apparently this snow storm came on quickly. The video below captures the first hour and 15 minutes: