Sunspots and Earth weather

Immense cracks sometimes develop in the Earth's magnetosphere and remain open for hours.

This allows the solar wind to push through and power stormy space weather.

The "solar wind" is a stream of charged particles issuing from the sun.

This wind can get gusty during violent solar events, such as solar flares and CME's (Coronal Mass Ejections).

Normally, the magnetosphere deflects these particles back out into space or toward either pole, causing the spectacular display known as the aurora borealis.

This deflection protects our atmosphere and helps stabilize weather patterns.

But when allowed into the atmosphere, these particles become a driving force in shifting ocean and jet-stream currents, and thus greatly alter weather patterns during the subsequent 48 to 72 hours.

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It is generally accepted that satellites, radio communication, and power systems are affected by such space storms, but that the sunspots have such a monumental affect upon the weather on planet Earth has not been admitted by mainstream scientists.

The new knowledge that the cracks in the magnetosphere are open for long periods can be incorporated into space weather forecasting computer models to more accurately predict how our space weather is influenced by violent events on the Sun.

Mainstream science has finally acknowledged a direct cause-and-effect relationship between solar activity and space weather, although there is still reluctance to acknowledge the relationship with earth weather.

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It now indeed looks like :
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Sunspots => Solar Flares => Magnetic Field Shift =>Shifting Ocean and Jet Stream Currents =>Extreme Weather and Human Disruption

And why is this of importance?

Because Solar Activity Is Increasing

Geophysicists, Ilya Usoskin and colleagues at the University of Oulu, Finland, and the Max-Planck Institute for Aeronomy in Germany, have calculated that the Sun is more magnetically active now than it has been for over a thousand years.

They say their study methodology, which relies on a radioactive dating technique, is the first direct quantitative reconstruction of solar activity based on physical, rather than statistical, models (I. G. Usoskin et al. 2003 Phys. Rev. Lett., 91 211101, available online at About Physics).

Sunspots are produced by magnetic activity inside the Sun.

The more active the Sun is, the more spots are produced.

Observations of sunspots began in 1610 A.D. — soon after the telescope was invented — and no directly obtained data exists from before this time.

Now, however, Usoskin and coworkers have used the concentration of beryllium-10 (Be-10) in polar ice as a proxy for historic levels of solar activity. Be-10 is produced when cosmic rays interact with particles in the Earth's atmosphere.

The radioisotope then falls to the ground, where it is stored in layers of ice.

Since the Sun's magnetic field usually deflects cosmic rays away from the Earth, a stronger field would lead to less Be-10 being produced, and vice versa.

Using modeling techniques, the Finnish team was able to extrapolate data on solar activity back to 850 AD.

Using this technique, the researchers found that there has been a sharp increase in the number of sunspots since the beginning of the 20th century.

They calculated that the average number was about 30 per year between 850 and 1900.

Between 1900 and 1944, the rate increased to 60 per year.

And today it is at its highest value ever, at 76 per year.

Mitch Battros, however, based upon his close tracking of recent solar activity, speculates that the number of sunspots today is closer to 176 per year.

Whether it's 76 or 176, the figure seems alarming. "We need to understand this unprecedented level of activity," Usoskin told PhysicsWeb.

"Is it a rare event that happens once a millennium, which means that the Sun will return to normal?

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Or is it a new, dynamic state that will keep solar activity levels high?

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No one knows, and this is indeed a variable which can have incalculable importance to our future

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BBC & Mitch Battros.