Scientists admit solar cycle 24 low is puzzling

Predictions that 2013 would see an upsurge in solar activity and geomagnetic storms have proved to be a false alarm. Instead, the current peak in solar cycle 24 is among the weakest for a century.  What scientists are saying:
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Subdued solar activity has prompted controversial comparisons with the Maunder Minimum. The Maunder Minimum, also known as the prolonged sunspot minimum, is the name used for the period starting in about 1645 and continuing to about 1715 when sunspots became exceedingly rare, as noted by solar observers of the time. These minimums supposedly coincided with the coldest period in the last millennium.

But Giuliana DeToma, a solar scientist at the High Altitude Observatory in Colorado says that the unusually low number of sunspots in recent years is not an indication that we are going into a Maunder Minimum, but added that researchers do not know how or why the Maunder Minimum started. As such, they really cannot predict the next one.

Other solar experts think the downturn is linked a different phenomenon called the Gleissberg cycle. The Gleissberg cycle, named after Wolfgang Gleissberg, is thought to be an amplitude modulation of the 11-year Schwabe Cycle which predicts a period of weaker solar activity every century or so. If that turns out to be true, the sun could remain unusually quiet through the middle of the 2020s. However, as scientists still do not fully understand why the Gleissberg cycle takes place, the evidence is, at best, inconclusive.

Conclusion: The coming years will be cold en the conditions will be poor.

Current sunspots