Expert predicts Bosphorus Strait to freeze in 2 years

Two prominent experts have come face to face with each other in a debate of intriguing questions after one of the experts made a prediction that the Bosphorus Strait would experience a "mini ice age" situation in two years while the other expert dismissed it by saying it was "out of the question."

"The Istanbul Strait will experience frost in 2022, 2023, or 2024. We will pass the strait by walking on the icy sea," said Professor Doğan Yaşar, the head of Dokuz Eylül University's Marine Science Technology Institute, on Feb. 26.

The statement by Yaşar received a strong reaction from another expert, Professor Levent Kurnaz, from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul.

"Frost in the Istanbul Strait? Out of the question, irrelevant. Besides, Istanbul will not experience heavy snowfall anytime soon," Kurnaz, the head of the Center of Climate Change and Policy studies in the university, told Demirören News Agency.

Yaşar based his claims on the risk of a coming global cooling, other than global warming.

"Like years in the 900s, we will experience the same global cooling in 2022, 2023, or 2024. Earth will experience a short break from global warming. During this break, we will see the Istanbul Strait freezing," Yaşar said.

"People walked on the frozen sea of the Istanbul Strait in 1929. In two or three years, I expect to see that scene again," he added.

He also underlined that global cooling would bring situations of global drought, and the country should take the measures beforehand.

Yaşar's statements led to a social media hype, and many social media users posted some old photos from 1929 and 1954 showing the icy Bosphorus with people walking on it.

In the mentioned years, 1929 and 1954, the Danube River in Central...