As a radio amateur I've been following the sunspots cycles nearly my whole life. And I very soon found that there is a kind of correlation with sunspot activity and the weather on earth. Sunspots are the source of massive eruptions on the surface of the sun and those electrically charged particles bombardes the earth, causes Aurora at both poles, stirs up the upper part of the ionosphere and thermosphere, distorts the magnetic field of the earth and thus influencing the dynamics in the atmosphere and oceans.
This is not in any way increasing (or decreasing) the mean temperature of the globe but it influences the distribution of warm and cold masses of air, especially in the area between the tropics and the poles where the sun never hits zenith.
There is a slight delay of one year or so because of the thermal capacity of the atmosphere, oceans and earth's crust down to some few meters but usually when the sunspot activity is high, we have warm summers and relatively mild winters but with great dynamics especially at winters, weather changing from very cold to snowstorms and mild weather within some few days and from prolonged periodes with sunny and warm weather changing into thunderstorms and rain in the summer here up in the northern Europe.
When the sunspot activity is low, we have cold and rainy summers with a constant travel of low pressure from the North Atlantic, only some few warm days and sunshine, it is more like spring transmogrifying into a prolonged autumn followed by a long and cold winter culminating in very low temperatures some two or three weeks in the end of January, beginning of February.
The last sunspot cycle ended last year and now there has been virtually no real sunspot activity for the last few months as stated in the article linked to in the header of this blog.
The sunspot activity is fluctuating in cycles of 10 to 12 years with a mean value of 11 years. On top of this we have a "minimum of minimum" cycle of 21 - 22 years and we are now in the midst of such a superminimum.
I can still remember the summer of 1965 and winter of 1966 as the worst and coldest in my youth and the summer of 1986, the winter of 1987 and summer of 1987 as very cold here. The denominator of these events was a similar lack of sunspot activity the very same or preceeding year.
So I cannot be very wrong if I predict a winter colder than normal and a shitty summer to follow....
This summer might be remembered as warm and dry compared to what is ahead of us here up north...
I hope I'm wrong and I hope that the sun will wake up into the next sunspot cycle very soon now.
The photo of the sun is by courtesy of NASA
