Solar Activity

[Jeff Russell]

This question came from my co-worker.

wow, the worst weather I have ever seen passing through the state(GA) tonight. Most solar activity I've ever seen this past month...coincidence?

He's an expert in astronomy. He runs the Charlie Bates Solar Astronomy Project

So is there a link?

Jeff

 

[Derek Weston]

This question came from my co-worker.

wow, the worst weather I have ever seen passing through the state(GA) tonight. Most solar activity I've ever seen this past month...coincidence?

He's an expert in astronomy. He runs the Charlie Bates Solar Astronomy Project

So is there a link?

Jeff

No. No appreciable effects.

We're just coming out of a solar minimum anyway. We've experienced much higher levels of solar activity.

You could look up solar max years and see how they trend with tornado production... but I can't imagine you'd be able to gather any significantly meaningful data. Solar maxes only occur every 11 years and our tornado record keeping quickly becomes shoddy. (so our data sets wouldn't even be too robust to begin with)

 

[Michael Gavan]

To give credit, An astronomy expert isn't necessarily going really enjoy or follow space weather or solar activity. i happen to really closely follow solar science. Doesn't necessarily mean I know that much about black holes or astrobiology. Just as a storm chaser probably might not have much interest or knowledge in glacial ice melt, even though the two are very weather related, they are very different!

On a very long time scale, solar activity does have a direct influence on weather. But in any certain week there's nothing the sun can lob at us that is as massive as the sun already does in terms of heat and light. Nothing we know of to cause a specific effect like a tornado outbreak.

I'd have to dig up the article, but NASA and the SWPC (my other favorite arm of NOAA) wrote that in terms of 'activity' linked to weather, it's been discovered that the outer layers of the atmosphere (the thermosphere) 'puffs up' and reaches higher altitudes. Not in any way significant enough to cause an effect in the troposphere. It does cause some annoying extra drag on LEO satellites. This puffing can occur during active periods on the sun and over the course of the sun's 11 year Min/Max cycle. Total Solar Output also changes by +/- 1% during the 11 year cycle. How much that effects weather on Earth isn't well understood yet, but again it's over the duration of 11 years, not over a scale of a few weeks. There are specific solar Minimums such as the Maunder Minimum that are partially blamed on mini-ice ages. part of the blame of global warming could go to the fact that we've had 150 years of power solar maximums. Most of that is anecdotal. Science has only recently (400 years) been able to study climate trends vs. solar activity, and they have just two big data points on that large scale. As Derek mentioned, Tornado data is even worse, so putting the two together would be impossible. And tornadoes in general are picky subjects. Too much warming or cooling could disrupt the conditions that produce them in high numbers in North America.

We are just leaving an excessively long period of Solar Minimum. As for solar activity right now, it's actually been quite low the last few weeks--a couple months in fact, sort of humdrum. No large flares, no large sunspots. It hasn't been especially week either. Not like it was in 2009.

 

[Robert Edmonds]

I'm just gonna back up what others are saying. I work in the same office with a solar astronomer, and my job is to model atmospheres of other planets. Last I heard this hasn't been an exactly spectacular solar maximum. Long story short there are other much more significant factors that developed this recent severe weather activity.