THE NEXT ICE AGE - NOW!

                      
  

15 Sep 10 - "The last solar minimum should have ended last year, but something peculiar has been happening," says Phil Berardelli in an article published today in Science. "Although solar minimums normally last about 16 months, the current one has stretched over 26 months—the longest in a century."

According to a paper submitted to the International Astronomical Union Symposium No. 273, the magnetic field strength of sunspots appears to be waning.

"This trend would lead to only half the number of spots in Cycle 24 compared to Cycle 23," say the paper's authors Matthew Penn and William Livingston. It would also imply "virtually no sunspots in Cycle 25."

If the trend continues, the sun's face may become spotless by 2016 and remain that way for decades, says Berardelli. A similar dearth of sunspots in the 17th century coincided with a prolonged period of cooling on Earth known as the Little Ice Age.

See entire article:
http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/climate-reports/7673-say-goodbye-to-sunspots
Thanks to Alan Caruba for this link
      "I am buying another pair of long johns," says Alan.

See Penn and Livingston paper:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.0784v1