Solar activity varies on a roughly 11-year cycle, in which its magnetic activity waxes and wanes.
NASA/TRACE
Posted on 09/29/2008 1:40:49 AM PDT by neverdem
Controversial research hints that solar cycle affects cyclone intensity.
A new study suggests that more sunspots mean less intense hurricanes on Earth. But many hurricane experts are cool on the idea.
James Elsner, a climatologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee, has analyzed hurricane data going back more than a century. He says he has identified a 10- to 12-year cycle in hurricane records that corresponds to the solar cycle, in which the Sun's magnetic activity rises and falls.
Solar activity varies on a roughly 11-year cycle, in which its magnetic activity waxes and wanes.
NASA/TRACE
The idea is that increased solar activity - associated with sunspots - means more ultraviolet radiation reaching the Earth's upper atmosphere. That warms the airs aloft and decreases the temperature differential between high and low elevations that otherwise would fuel hurricanes.
"Our results indicate that there is an effect in the intensity of storms due to the higher temperatures aloft," says Elsner, who published the results on 19 September in Geophysical Research Letters1.
He says the statistical analysis suggests a 10% decrease in hurricane intensity for every 100 sunspots. At the peak of its cycle, the Sun might exhibit around 250 sunspots.
Hot debate Establishing such a relationship would be enormously valuable, providing researchers, meteorologists and insurance companies with another tool for predicting storms and assessing financial liabilities. Several hurricane experts called the study provocative but raised questions about statistical analysis, as well as the physical processes at play.
Ka-Kit Tung, a climate researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle who has studied the solar cycle, says ultraviolet rays do most of their heating when they are absorbed by ozone higher in the stratosphere. But hurricanes don't make it past the tropopause, the boundary layer between the troposphere and the stratosphere that is about 16 kilometres up at storm latitudes. "We have not established that there is heating at the tropopause due to the solar cycle," Tung says.
For the new study, Elsner and a post-doctoral student, Thomas Jagger, used more than a century of records on hurricanes that reached land in the United States as a proxy for records on hurricane intensity. The assumption is that the effect on overall hurricane intensity would make itself evident as more or fewer hurricane-strength storms made land. But not everybody buys the idea that frequency can be reliably translated into intensity.
"This is something worth investigating, but they made too many assumptions for me to just accept their conclusion at this point," says Judy Curry, a hurricane researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. She and others questioned whether the influence of solar cycles would be strong enough to appear in such data sets.
In search of a mechanism Earlier this month Elsner published a paper in Nature2 providing more evidence that rising ocean temperatures will increase the intensity of major storms around the globe. He says the solar-cycle pattern emerged after his team had already taken into account major factors such as sea-surface temperatures.
The team also found a correlation when comparing sunspot records with daily intensity values for storms dating back to 1944, using "best-track" records from the National Hurricane Center. "It gives us some faith that we are probably on to something here," Elsner says.
The effect would be felt in areas where sea-surface temperatures are high enough to produce big storms, he says. In marginal areas, where waters are cooler, solar activity could promote storms by providing the initial heat to seed a hurricane.
"It's an interesting statistical finding, but I'm unclear on the mechanisms here," says Thomas Knutson, a hurricane researcher with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Princeton, New Jersey. "There's more work needed to see if there really is a physical effect and to flesh out the mechanism."
References
Elsner, J. B. & Jagger, T. J. Geophys. Res. Lett. 35, L18705, doi:10.1029/2008GL034431 (2008).
Elsner, J. , Kossin, J. P. & Jagger, T. H. Nature 445, 92–95 (2008).
And I thought my SUV was causing it.
Whodathunkit - the sun ...
It has been known for over 75 years that during sunspot minimums and maximums that weather variability is higher.
I am a Ham operator, and of course it also affects radio propogation. That has been observed for almost 100 years.
This article is interesting, and I find it credible. Unfortunately much of “Science” today is not about discovering how things really work, but how to get funding for whatever they are working on. Or on how to gain control over others, ie. GlowBullWarming. (Chicken Little the sky is falling).
The media will ignore this. Doesn’t fit in with the fiction that our lightbulbs and SUV’s are causing “global warming”
I think she awakening. (pick of the week: 9.26.2008)
Al Gore vetoed the study.
Next thing you know, the wackos will tell us that Global warming is creating sun spots, which in turn is causing more and stronger hurricanes...
I had a liberal gal tell me last week that I should be drinking bottled water instead of diet cola. I replied that I did not want to waste the precious commodity of drinking water, that’s why I drank diet cola. She somehow didn’t know how to respond to that...
Duuuuuuuuuhhhh, you mean it’s not global warming?
Backlash to Obama officials squelching political speech
Are We at an Inflection Point? by Michael Barone
An ACORN Falls from the Tree - A congressional outrage. by Ken Blackwell
NY new-gun database has yet to lead to prosecution
Some noteworthy articles about politics, foreign and military affairs, IMHO, FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
P.S. I'd rather be doing something else. My Momma had to go in a nursing home for 24/7 care. I have to complete a most distressing bunch of business. Please indulge me in your forbearance.
P.P.S. Thanks for any thoughts of comiseration, but I just don't have time for any individual "thank you." This is just a lousy mess for any one who survives their parents. My Momma put up with so much crap from me, she should be a saint.
Prayers up and the confidence that the Great Physician will be with you every step.
ping
My mom went in one just a couple of months ago. I took her and dad to my sister's in Arizona for the winter (from Michigan) late last year. Her health (Parkinson) continued to slide down despite having DBS implanted. My sis could not care for her any longer as she required 24/7.
Big mess. My thoughts are with you and your mom.
Thanks for the ping!
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Another mystery for meteorologists: As a rule, hurricanes display little if any lightning. But during the record-setting hurricane season of 2005 three of the most powerful storms—Rita, Katrina, and Emily—provoked an astonishing abundance of lightning...
...the answer becomes both simple and undeniable once the electrical nature of the solar system is admitted. An electric solar system could hardly exclude an electric Earth. And once we see electrical phenomena on Earth in relation to the larger circuitry, our planet's atmosphere can be compared to the leaky dielectric in a “self-repairing capacitor”: the charge is already waiting in the ionosphere to be unleashed in storms in the atmosphere. We have seen the electrical connection of thunderstorms to the ionosphere in the appearance of giant lightning bursts to space. These electrical displays have been named “red sprites” and “blue jets”...
Red Sprites, Blue Jets and Elves.
Thanks!
Not really surprising. It will be interesting if the study is confirmed. If hurricane intensity is even on the order of 10% different simply correlated with solar activity, that would be a much greater effect than the alarmists subscribe to the Sun.
So it’s not all Bush’s fault?!
My work began with Sir James Jeans' Book, "Through Space and Time". Within the pages of the book is a graph made by Sir Richard Gregory. My work is based on these two men's work. Sir Gregory found a direct relationship between the water levels of Lake Victoria and sunspot cycles in the early 1900s. They are perfect according Sir Jeans. We appear to be similar sunspot cycle now compared to the 1964 cycle. We are coming off of three decades of strong cycles that have warmed up the earth, causing more named storms and reducing glacier activity. It also caused the the Polar Region Ice to collapse.
I informed the Governor of Florida and all the water management districts this past year in the January 2008 time frame and again in April time frame. I also sent initial copies my work to NOAA and Hurricane Tracking Center.
It works like this,
Find each start and stop of the Sunspot Cycle and place within it all the sunspot datat using .xls file.
Then Pull down accumulated cyclone energy data by year
Put these together into an area graph. Grab your seat! The hair will go up on the back of your legs and chills down your spine.
Next, pull up a map of Glacier Bay National Park, the one that has the dates of receding dates. You will find that the glacier melted away beginning with sunspot activity in 1750. You also have to read some history with that.
Now, Looking ahead.
Another scientist just recently reported regrowth in glaciers. If that started in 2002, that coincides with the last cooling of the last sunspot cycle.
If,this cycle is slow to start pull up the data I mentioned above beginning around 1964 through 1977
You will get the picture of what might happen in this next cycle. If it holds true, then we will have nearly back to back La Nina's in about 10 to 12 years.
Also study ocean Carbon Dioxide flex. You will find with some basic chemistry that the earth can produce its own dry ice which helps preserve the Polar Ice.
It will take about 14 years for Polar Region ice to recover if this present sunspot cycle is cooler than the three previous cycles.
I published a couple things in the Lakeland Ledger. I didn't pick up many friends with that letter. I'm glad this good professor is breaking ice.
Full speed ahead, Dr Elser.
I have plenty of graphs if you need them.
I just don't know how to download them.
I tried to get this printed a couple of years ago, but to know avail. So I just wrote the people mentioned above.
I'm just going to send out an end of year report to the same agencies. I still need an end of the year report from NASA and this years sunspot activity to finish up this years chart.
This is great stuff.
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