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One historical long-term correlation between solar activity and climate change is the 1645–1715 Maunder minimum, a period of little or no sunspot activity which partially overlapped the "Little Ice Age" during which cold weather prevailed in Europe. The Little Ice Age encompassed roughly the 16th to the 19th centuries.
This solar cycle affects solar irradiation and influences space weather, terrestrial weather, and climate. The solar cycle also modulates the flux of short-wavelength solar radiation, from ultraviolet to X-ray and influences the frequency of solar flares , coronal mass ejections and other solar eruptive phenomena.
Sunspot number is correlated with the intensity of solar radiation over the period since 1979, when satellite measurements became available. The variation caused by the sunspot cycle to solar output is on the order of 0.1% of the solar constant (a peak-to-trough range of 1.3 W·m −2 compared with 1366 W·m −2 for the average solar constant).
The Suess cycle, or de Vries cycle, is a cycle present in radiocarbon proxies of solar activity with a period of about 210 years. It was named after Hans Eduard Suess and Hessel de Vries . [ 48 ] Despite calculated radioisotope production rates being well correlated with the 400-year sunspot record, there is little evidence of the Suess cycle ...
Sunspot counts exist since 1610 [2] but the cycle numbering is not well defined during the Maunder minimum. [3] It was proposed that one cycle might have been lost in the late 18th century, [4] but this remains not fully confirmed. Solar cycles can be reconstructed indirectly, using the radiocarbon 14 C proxy, for the last millennium. [5]
In 2006, NASA predicted that the next sunspot maximum would reach between 150 and 200 around the year 2011 (30–50% stronger than cycle 23), followed by a weak maximum at around 2022. [50] [51] Instead, the sunspot cycle in 2010 was still at its minimum, when it should have been near its maximum, demonstrating its unusual weakness. [52]
The largest sunspots can be tens of thousands of kilometers across. [111] An 11-year sunspot cycle is half of a 22-year Babcock–Leighton dynamo cycle, which corresponds to an oscillatory exchange of energy between toroidal and poloidal solar magnetic fields. At solar-cycle maximum, the external poloidal dipolar magnetic field is near its ...
The water cycle is essential to life on Earth and plays a large role in the global climate system and ocean circulation. The warming of our planet is expected to be accompanied by changes in the water cycle for various reasons. [3] For example, a warmer atmosphere can contain more water vapor which has effects on evaporation and rainfall.