What was the climate on Earth during the Maunder Minimum?

What was the climate on Earth during the Maunder Minimum?

From 1650 to 1710, temperatures across much of the Northern Hemisphere plunged when the Sun entered a quiet phase now called the Maunder Minimum. During this period, very few sunspots appeared on the surface of the Sun, and the overall brightness of the Sun decreased slightly.

How much did temperatures drop during the Maunder Minimum?

The most recent grand solar minimum occurred during Maunder Minimum (1645–1710), which led to reduction of solar irradiance by 0.22% from the modern one and a decrease of the average terrestrial temperature by 1.0–1.5°C.

What happened during the Maunder Minimum?

Maunder minimum, unexplained period of drastically reduced sunspot activity that occurred between 1645 and 1715. Sunspot activity waxes and wanes with roughly an 11-year cycle. In 1894 the English astronomer Edward Walter Maunder pointed out that very few sunspots had been observed between 1645 and 1715.

When did the Maunder Minimum occur?

1645 – 1715
Maunder Minimum/Periods

What was the temperature during the Maunder Minimum?

The impact of the solar minimum is clear in this image, which shows the temperature difference between 1680, a year at the center of the Maunder Minimum, and 1780, a year of normal solar activity, as calculated by a general circulation model.

How is solar activity recorded during the Maunder Minimum?

Solar activity events recorded in radiocarbon. Graph showing proxies of solar activity, including changes in sunspot number and cosmogenic isotope production. Past solar activity may be recorded by various proxies, including carbon-14 and beryllium-10. These indicate lower solar activity during the Maunder Minimum.

How did the Maunder minimum cause the Little Ice Age?

While scientists continue to research whether an extended solar minimum could have contributed to cooling the climate, there is little evidence that the Maunder Minimum sparked the Little Ice Age, or at least not entirely by itself (notably, the Little Ice Age began before the Maunder Minimum).

How did the Maunder Minimum get its name?

It was named after Edward Maunder, a nineteenth-century astronomer who painstakingly reconstructed European sunspot observations. The Maunder Minimum has become synonymous with the Little Ice Age, a period of climatic cooling that, according to some definitions, endured from around 1300 to 1850,…