By Andy May
Yesterday, Roger Pielke Jr. posted a plot of the 3-year frequency of global major hurricanes (he uses a simple count of them) created by Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue). Dr. Maue also posted this plot on his twitter feed here. I noticed it looked like an inverse sunspot plot and overlaid the SILSO monthly sunspot count. In the figure, the blue is Maue’s plot, and the orange is a plot of monthly SILSO sunspots. The correlation, or strictly speaking, the anti-correlation is obvious and very interesting. I don’t think Ryan Maue’s plot has been formally published yet.
It appears that some extreme weather is influenced by changes in solar activity.
OK, I’ll speculate.
Sunlight penetrates deeply (up to 1,000 meters) into the ocean before it is absorbed. Greenhouse gas radiation cannot penetrate the ocean surface. The residence time of sunlight energy is longer as a result. This magnifies solar changes since Watt-for-Watt changes in sunlight matter more than changes in greenhouse gases.
Storms are a function of temperature differences, when an imbalance (increase in energy storage) happens in the tropics at the top of the solar cycle, the temperature difference between the tropics and the mid-latitudes increases. This causes storminess and hurricanes to increase, the increase doesn’t stop until the next solar minimum. Solar peaks appear to initiate an increase in storminess. Just a guess, take it for what it’s worth.
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Over one hundred comments and not one mentions the real connection: ELECTRICITY! The sun is electric by nature, the so-called “solar wind” is by definition an electric current (moving charged particles) and storms are electrically generated: Look at the photos of the eyes of hurricanes with their definite hexagonal form exactly like the north pole of Saturn. It’s electricity all the way down!!
My understanding is that hurricanes and cyclones originate in the tropics where they are sustained and strengthened by warm ocean water. If Argo float data exists for the areas of our oceans that spawn hurricanes/cyclones, perhaps, we should compare the heat content of the top layers of these areas of interest with, say, sunspot activity that took place 5 years earlier.
It is doubtful solar heating is the reason for the anti correlation. Tropical Storm formation is not just about the ocean surface temperature, except that they do not form until it reaches 80F or above. You can have very hot surface water and no Tropical Storms if the winds, cyclones etc do not favor formation.
More plausible would be cloud formation dynamics, as in the cosmic ray hypothesis of was it “Svensmark” (spelling?). The cosmic ray flux could be altered by the solar magnetic field varying along with the sunspot cycle. And higher or lower cloud formation, irrespective of water temps and humidity would certainly affect Tropical Storm formation.
Furthermore, large scale solar magnetic field changes, associated with sunspot cycle, could also influence our atmosphere in ways not obvious. Example would be changes in the terrestrial electric field strength – affecting thunderstorm formation. And without thunderstorms, there would be no tropical storms, as they are the feedstuff for the larger systems.
We don’t know what we don’t know, and it is a most intriguing correlation indeed.
The anti-correlation is an artifact of the time it takes to absorb enough energy over the solar maximum before the surface reaches the temperature high enough for major evaporation/convection (ie ACE).
The problem with Svensmark’s hypothesis is there are fewer clouds during solar minima, not more.
Does anyone have any good information on the impact of upper atmospheric cooling and increased cosmic radiation during solar minimum on storm formation. Atmospheric cooling and increase cosmic rays seem like worthy variables to consider….. I am sure I am scratching the surface.
Can someone explain the 3-year shift between the extrema of terrestrial hurricanes (before) and sunspots (after) ? I don’t see a causal correlation
The mid 1980’s hurricane activity is far lower than in the following cycles. I wouldn’t want to predict a continuation of the last three cycles, because of how the AMO anomalies change phase relative to solar cycles. Always the coldest around sunspot minimum when in the cold phase, and never the coldest around sunspot minimum when in the warm phase: