The investigations of the Maunders demonstrated a correlation between the variation in sunspot numbers and the climate of the Earth, leading to the discovery that the period of decreased solar activity during the Maunder Minimum.
32.
The period between 1645 and 1715, a time of few sunspots, is known as the Maunder minimum, after Edward Walter Maunder, who extensively researched this peculiar event, first noted by Gustav Sp�rer.
33.
Near solar twins can help us to understand solar activity such as solar flares and sunspot cycles over longer time periods than the historical records, and to put unique historical events such as the Maunder minimum in context.
34.
Note that the term " Little Ice Age " applied to the Maunder minimum is something of a misnomer as it implies a period of unremitting cold ( and on a global scale ), which is not the case.
35.
A mathematics graduate of Girton College, Cambridge, she was first hired ( in 1890 ) to be an assistant to Edward Walter Maunder, discoverer of the Maunder Minimum, the head of the solar department at Greenwich Observatory.
36.
Noting that the rings were thinner in dry years, he reported climate effects from solar variations, particularly in connection with the 17th-century dearth of sunspots ( the Maunder Minimum ) noticed previously by William Herschel and others.
37.
Sp�rer noted that, during one 28-year period within the Maunder Minimum ( 1672 1699 ), observations showed fewer than 50 sunspots, as opposed to a more typical 40, 000 50, 000 spots in modern times.
38.
The fundamental papers on the Maunder minimum ( Eddy, Legrand, Gleissberg, Schr�der, Landsberg " et al . " ) have been published in " Case studies on the Sp�rer, Maunder and Dalton Minima ".
39.
One historical long-term correlation between solar activity and climate change is the 1645 1715 Maunder minimum, a period of little or no sunspot activity which partially overlapped the " Little Ice Age " during which cold weather prevailed in Europe.
40.
For example, the coldest winter in the Central England Temperature record is 1683-84, but the winter just two years later ( both in the middle of the Maunder minimum ) was the fifth warmest in the whole 350-year CET record.
