Is this the beginning of a new mini ice age?

Washington, Jan 12 (ANI): America's present icy weather may just mark the beginning of a mini ice age, a UN climate expert has warned.

According to Mojib Latif, a professor at the Leibniz Institute at Germany's Kiel University and an author of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, the next 30 years could see mercury dipping further.

His mini ice age theory is based on a review of natural cycles in water temperatures in the world's oceans.

Latif says the prolonged cold weather is just a 30 year-long-break in the global warming cycle, which assumes that temperatures will rise rapidly in the near future.

He told the Daily Mail that "a significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th Century was due to these cycles-perhaps as much as 50 percent," reports Fox News. (ANI)