Century-scale patterns of solar activity suggest the onset of the next Little Ice Age cooling period is here.
Newly published research utilizing historical solar magnetic field phase analysis documents the impact of solar activity on Earth’s temperature.
Cold “Little Ice Age” periods can be reliably linked to Grand Solar Minima (GSM).
For example, during the Maunder Minimum (late 1600s to early 1700s), solar irradiance is thought to have declined by about 3 W/m², and consequently the Northern Hemisphere cooled by approximately 1°C.
Using pattern analysis, it may be assumed that the onset of the next GSM has arrived, and global cooling will be realized over the next few decades.
“During a GSM a reduction of solar irradiance is expected by about 3 W/m² from the modern level that causes a decrease of the average terrestrial temperature by about 1.0C.”
“In summary, it can be concluded that the modern grand solar minimum (2020-2053) predicted 10 years ago by Zharkova et al, 2015 has arrived and will progress as expected until the mid of century. There is the cold weather with huge frosts and snows recorded in January- February 2026 in the whole Northern hemisphere from the West to the East and from the North to the equator. The little ice age associated with the modern grand solar minimum is here…”
Image Source: Zharkova, 2026
Kenneth, solar activity peaked in 1960 and has generally been decreasing since then, more than half a century … but the temperature has been increasing.
How do you explain that?
Next, it appears you’ve cherry-picked your graphic to end in 2022. Why are you not using data up to the present?
And that’s just the start of the problems.
Your Zarkhova paper claims a grand solar minimum produces “a reduction of solar irradiance by about 3 W/m2” leading to “a decrease of the average terrestrial temperature by about 1.0°C.”
Here’s the problem. That 3 W/m2 figure is Zharkova’s theoretical change in total solar irradiance at the top of the atmosphere, before you account for geometry or albedo. The Earth intercepts solar radiation on a disk but spreads it over a sphere, so you divide by four. Then Earth’s albedo reflects about 30 percent back to space, and the atmosphere absorbs some more. So your 3 W/m2 becomes roughly 0.4 W/m2 of actual forcing at the surface. Color me unimpressed.
It’s as if Zharkova looked at the raw irradiance number and forgot that you can’t just plug top-of-atmosphere values into climate sensitivity calculations.
Next, the paper’s predictions rest on Principal Component Analysis of about 20 years of solar magnetic field data (1976-1996). From this brief window, Zharkova extrapolates forward and backward for millennia using unspecified “mathematical expressions.”
But PCA is a descriptive statistical technique. It provides zero physical basis for extrapolation beyond your data range. You might as well fit a polynomial to the stock market and predict the next century’s Dow Jones.
The paper mentions a 67 percent correlation with historical sunspot numbers—that’s R² of about 0.45, less than half the variance explained. And there’s no out-of-sample validation. None.
Zharkova’s previous paper on this topic (2019, Scientific Reports) was retracted in March 2020 for fundamental physics errors. This current 2026 paper? Not a word about the retraction. When your previous work gets pulled for basic mistakes, you don’t just publish the same predictions elsewhere and pretend it never happened.
This paper gets the solar forcing magnitude wrong by a factor of eight, extrapolates a statistical pattern across millennia with no physical justification, and ignores the retraction of previous work on the same topic. The claimed 1.0°C cooling contradicts decades of solar physics research and satellite observations.
If a grand solar minimum were happening right now—and the evidence for that is itself questionable—it MIGHT produce something on the order of a 0.4 W/m2 reduction in surface solar radiation, which might result in a 04°C temperature change or less. Lost in the noise.
Best regards,
w.
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Crap. Been working on optimization, sorry.
Fixed now, thanks. !
Zharkova is wrong.
Solar Cycle 24 sunspot peak
April 2014, smoothed value of 82
Solar Cycle 25 sunspot peak
October 2024, smoothed value of 161
The myth of an imminent Grand Solar Minimum was debunked by well known climate change skeptic Javier Vinos about two years ago.
“There is the cold weather with huge frosts and snows recorded in January- February 2026 in the whole Northern hemisphere from the West to the East and from the North to the equator.”
Uhmmm, no not here in central British Columbia. It was the mildest, warmest January I have experienced in the 40 years that I lived here.
Do you ever get Déjà vu?
I suggest we call solar cycles 24 and 25 the “Al Gore Minimum” but I’m just being petty and want to rub his nose in “an inconvenient truth.”
Much has changed since the Little Ice Age, so much so that we are not going to notice a 1 centigrade variation. Land-use changes and deforestation are the primary drivers, in my humble opinion. Actually, this is good news since the Little Ice Age brought famine and pestilence.
So, Lief Svalgaard was ultimately correct in his conclusions?
One of the key effects of Ice Ages is amount of dust in air. In Europe last 2 years are full of dust events, where Sahara dust is reaching up to Great Britain, Norway or Russia.
I don’t remember from my childhood any presence or mention of dust in the air.
And it is physically visible on cars, windows, sidewalks. So if it would be present in the past, it would be visible too.
A useful solar model would map every centennial minimum including their intervals which very between 80 and 130 years, and the duration of each centennial minimum which vary from two to five solar cycles long.
Figure 7 in the paper has a 400 year envelope which cannot keep track of centennial solar minima with an average length of ~110 years, and it is at full amplitude during the Sporer Minimum, the longest centennial minimum of the little ice age. So Zharkova has invoked a supernova to account for the decades of cold weather then. A very odd tapestry.
…with an average *interval* of ~110 years,