Within the last 30 years, it has been confirmed that extended periods of sunspot inactivity have a direct effect on the Earth’s climate. During the period from 1645 to 1715, sunspot sightings were extremely scarce. Both European and Eastern records indicate an absence of auroral activity as well. This period of solar inactivity, the Maunder Minimum, corresponds to a cold weather period known as the "Little Ice Age". During this unusually frigid period, lakes and rivers froze all across Europe, and the Arctic sea ice extended further south than it has since that time [4]. There is evidence that the Earth has seen six such periods of solar inactivity in the last 5000 years, and the possibility of a similar event occurring in our future cannot be discounted.

Conversely, periods of unusually high sunspot activity have an opposite effect; during the Medieval Maximum, which occurred in the late12^th to early 13^th century, the glaciers retreated and unprecedented auroral activity was recorded throughout Europe [5].