FALSE: A Little Ice Age has not begun
A claim that Earth is currently in the midst of a Little Ice Age is FALSE.
This website claimed that "the Little Ice Age has already started", adding that this means "30 cold years".
The Earth has recently experienced a Little Ice Age, in geological terms. Between 1300 and 1850, there was a significant drop in temperatures, decreasing by 0.6℃ on average, and decadal decreases of up to 2℃ in some areas. This cooling period was caused by natural factors.
But is the Earth currently in another Little Ice Age?
The Earth moves naturally between ice ages over time. Variations in the Earth's orbit around the Sun cause heat to decrease and ice ages to occur. PesaCheck has previously shown that this has nothing to do with current warming.
The most recent ice age, or glacial period, occurred between 120,000 and 11,500 years ago. Since that time, Earth has been in an interglacial period called the Holocene. Ice ages are a well-studied scientific phenomenon. Earth has experienced 20 or more alternating glacial and interglacial periods.
The only Little Ice Age in scientific literature is the one that lasted from 1300 to 1850. This period has been extensively studied. There is no peer-reviewed research indicating that we are currently in another Little Ice Age.
Temperatures are not falling; they continue to increase rapidly. Humans are the primary driver of this dramatic rise in global temperatures. This rise has also occurred while radiation from the sun has actually decreased.
The last few years have been the warmest ever recorded. This has caused the temperature to increase more than what models have predicted.
Human warming is also believed to potentially delay the next ice age.
PesaCheck has examined a claim that Earth is currently undergoing a Little Ice Age and finds it to be FALSE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here's more information on PesaCheck's methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck climate change fact-checker Christiaan van der Merwe and edited by PesaCheck chief copy editor Stephen Ndegwa.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck’s managing editor Doreen Wainainah.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent's largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.