sun spots

[0000]

I immagine this question has been asked before but i'm curious as to how a sunspot/magnetic storm occurs and how it affects our climate.Also why do sunspots or the lack of cause hale winters?.

[BARRY]

I immagine this question has been asked before but i'm curious as to how a sunspot/magnetic storm occurs and how it affects our climate.Also why do sunspots or the lack of cause hale winters?.

try wikpedia and type in sunspot

[Iceberg]

There was a program on last night that gave a simple explanation about this relationship, including some of the history about sunspot and the price of wheat correlations etc. It was also on at exactly the same time you posted. !. typical.

Thanks to iplayer you can watch it anytime you want.

I think it was called climate wars...

[BrickFielder]

Good question and there are a number of mechanism suggested why sunspots affect weather. The first and simpliest is that sunspots increase the suns output slightly warming the planet just a little.Another reason is because it increases ionosation and radiation assorption in certain layers of the atmosphere. Perhaps the most interesting mechanism is through disturbances and waves created in the Ionosphere by sunspots. These waves affect the reflectivity and the couplings between different layers in the atmosphere. This is an area very much still under investigation and is not particularly well modelled in current climate models. Here is a quick quote from a Harvard Paper

Surprisingly enough, correlations with geomagnetic storms seem to reappear in the troposphere, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere. Atmospheric electricity is affected by geomagnetic storms, as well. We essentially understand the effects of geomagnetic storms in the lower ionosphere, but there is a lack of mechanisms to explain correlations found deeper in the atmosphere, particularly in the troposphere.

[0000]

There was a program on last night that gave a simple explanation about this relationship, including some of the history about sunspot and the price of wheat correlations etc. It was also on at exactly the same time you posted. !. typical.

Thanks to iplayer you can watch it anytime you want.

I think it was called climate wars...

it's where I stumbled upon the question but as the tv (no matter how polite I ask won't answer my questions in more depth) SO THOUGHT...I know, there's a weather forum with helpful knowlegable folk on there who may assist in the learners area. B)

Such as Brickfielder as an example of that..................thanks BF

Edited September 15, 2008 by hannegan