2020s

Millennium:	3rd millennium
Centuries:	20th century – 21st century – 22nd century
Decades:	1990s 2000s 2010s – 2020s – 2030s 2040s 2050s
Years:	2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029

The 2020s is the upcoming decade, which will begin on January 1, 2020 and will end on December 31, 2029. It is the third decade of the 21st century and the 3rd millennium.

Notable predictions and known events

• The interaction of the three main decadal solar cycles suggests an upcoming reduction in solar activity, with a low-energy period centered around 2020.^[1] As suggested by John Maddox of Nature, this might mitigate the global warming (at least temporarily) in the 2010s and 2020s.^[2]
• Assuming that the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation runs through an 70-year quasi-cycle (after peaks in ≈1880 and ≈1950), its current warm phase is likely to peak during this decade.^[3][4]
• Each of ESA (Europe),^[5] CNSA (China),^[6] FKA (Russia),^[7] and ISRO (India)^[8] plan to send a manned mission to the Moon in this decade.
• According to a report released by the National Intelligence Council, the United States will experience the relative decline of its economic and military power, driven both by the rise of new behemoths such as China, India and The European Union with domestic constraints on its global leadership.^[9]
• Voyager 2 is expected to stop transmitting back to Earth in the 2020s.^[10]
• Futurist Ray Kurzweil puts 2029 as the year most likely for a breakthrough in Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). He expects that around this time, computers will reach human intelligence levels, and shortly thereafter surpass the capabilities of the human brain.^[11]
• Intel predicts the performance of supercomputers to reach zettaflops scale by 2029.^[12]
• By the end of the decade, world population is projected to surpass 8 billion people, half a billion more than 2010, representing a slowdown in growth from the '10s, which are expected to increase the population by 700 million.^[13]

In media

• The games Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception and its sequel, Ace Combat Xi: Skies of Incursion.
• The majority of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine two-part story "Past Tense" takes place between August 30 and September 3, 2024.

References