Climate change with mass extinctions has happened 5 times, 

they were called ice age! 

These Ice ages had names, Huronian, Cryogenian, Andean-Saharan, Karoo, and Quaternary. There was even a little ice age.

Only 300 years ago, Europe came to the end of a 500 year cold snap so severe that thousands of peasants starved. The Little Ice Age changed the course of European history.

The Little Ice Age was a period of bitter winters and mild summers that affected Europe and North America between the 14th and 19th centuries. The cold weather is well documented in written records and supported by paleoclimatic records such as tree rings, glacial growth, and lake sediments. These paleoclimatic records serve as proxies that register past temperatures, confirming that it was colder than usual.

Thanks to paleoclimatic records, climate scientists have identified four cold and warm “climate epochs” during the past 2,000 years: the Roman Warm Period, which covered the first centuries of the Common Era; the Dark Ages Cold Period, from 400 to 800; the Medieval Warm Period between 800 and 1200; and, most recently, the Little Ice Age.

The temperature proxies that allowed scientists to define these epochs were mostly from the extratropical Northern Hemisphere, particularly Europe and North America. 

An interesting aspect of solar cycles

An interesting aspect of solar cycles is that the sun went through a period of near zero sunspot activity from about 1645 to 1715.  This period of sunspot minima is called the Maunder Minimum.  The "Little Ice Age" occurred over parts of Earth during the Maunder Minimum.  So how much does the solar output affect Earth's climate?  There is debate within the scientific community how much solar activity can, or does affect Earth's climate.  There is research which shows evidence that Earth's climate is sensitive to very weak changes in the Sun's energy output over time frames of 10s and 100s of years.  Times of maximum sunspot activity are associated with a very slight increase in the energy output from the sun.  Ultraviolet radiation increases dramatically during high sunspot activity, which can have a large effect on the Earth's atmosphere.  The converse is true during minimum sunspot activity.  But trying to filter the influence of the Sun's energy output and its effect on our climate with the "noise" created by a complex interaction between our atmosphere, land and oceans can be difficult.  For example, there is research which shows that the Maunder Minimum not only occurred during a time with a decided lack of sunspot activity, but also coincided with a multi-decade episode of large volcanic eruptions.  Large volcanic eruptions are known to hinder incoming solar radiation.  Finally, there is also evidence that some of the major ice ages Earth has experienced were caused by Earth being deviated from its average 23.5 degree tilt on its axis.  Indeed Earth has tilted anywhere from near 22 degrees to 24.5 degrees on its axis.  But overall when examining Earth on a global scale, and over long periods of time, it is certain that the solar energy output does have an affect on Earth's climate.  However there will always be a question to the degree of affect due to terrestrial and oceanic interactions on Earth.

Throughout our planet’s 4.5 billion years, there have been five big ice ages, some of which lasted hundreds of millions of years. Researchers are still trying to understand how often these periods happen and how soon we can expect another one.

The big ice ages account for roughly 25 percent of the past billions of years on Earth. The most recent of Earth’s five major ice ages in the paleo record dates back 2.7 million years and continues today.

Within these large periods are smaller ice ages called glacials and warm periods called interglacials.

During the Quaternary glaciation period, which began about 2.7 to 1 million years ago, cold glacial periods took place every 41,000 years. However, huge glacial sheets have appeared less frequently over the last 800,000 years and now appear about every 100,000 years.

In the 100,000-year cycle, ice sheets grow for roughly 90,000 years and then take another 10,000 years to collapse in warmer periods before the process repeats itself. However, the two factors related to Earth's orbit that affect the glacials’ and interglacials’ formation are off.

Biologists suspect we’re living through the sixth major mass extinction. “We don’t always know what caused them but most had something to do with rapid climate change”.