By Andy May
Today, 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.
Very interesting, and it looks like a 2-3 year delay in increased hurricane activity following sunspot max. This is similar (yet different) from the correlation that Javier Vinos found, where 2-3 years after sunspot minimum, a La Nina (or La Nada) occurs.
Very Interesting.
Clearly the Sun has an influence on weather.
Interesting
Yes, very interesting. Might be worth looking at angular momentum or some other indicator of the velocity of circulation of the atmosphere in the same vein. Suggest comparing high latitudes in both hemispheres. Could be linked with a change in the relationship between the Earths magnetic field and the interplanetary magnetic field.
Erl, It is probably simpler than that. Sunlight penetrates deeply into the ocean before it is absorbed. Greenhouse gas radiation cannot penetrate the ocean surface. The residence time of sunlight is longer as a result. This magnifies solar changes, Watt-for-Watt changes in sunlight matter more. Storms are a function of temperature differences, when an imbalance happens in the tropics the temperature difference to the mid-latitudes increases. This causes storminess and hurricanes to increase, the increase doesn’t stop until the next solar minimum. Solar peaks initiate an increase in storminess.
Probably obvious, but perhaps Harald Ynddstad’s Climate Clock hypothesis (https://www.climateclock.no/) offers another correlation http://climateclock.no/doc/TN/TN%20200309%20Solar%20Variability-1700.pdf ?
Thanks interesting report, but I didn’t see where it compared sunspots to hurricanes or storminess.
You may need more than a guess. Try to get a paper published
This is just an interesting observation, along with a first guess. Not enough for a paper. Maybe someday.