Madam, – My good friend Ray Bates (Opinion Analysis, January 15th) thinks that “. . . the recent conditions . . . are unlikely to become a habitual feature of our winters”.
If, as I believe, the recent behaviour of the sun indicates the onset of a prolonged period of solar inactivity, we may be faced with many cold winters. The coldest part of the Little Ice Age at the end of the 17th century coincided with an almost total lack of sunspots lasting 70 years which Jack Eddy named the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715). By using carbon-14 in tree rings as a proxy for solar activity, Eddy identified also a 90-year interval which he named the Spörer Minimum (1460-1550). Lesser minima coinciding with cooler conditions in Europe include Oort (1010-1050), Wolf (1280-1350) and Dalton (1790-1830). We ignore the historical record at our peril. – Yours, etc,