How does sunspots affect global warming

What happens to our world when global warming and the end of this period converge? When climate change comes up in conversation, the question of a possible link with the Sun is often raised. The Sun is a highly active and complicated body. Its behaviour does change over time and this can affect our climate.

But these impacts are much smaller than those caused by our burning of fossil fuels and, crucially, they do not build up over time. The main change in the Sun is an year Solar cycle of high and low activity, which initially revealed itself in a count of sunspots. Sunspots have been observed continuously since , although their cyclical variation was not noticed until much later.

Sunspots have been recognized as early as 28 B. Unfortunately, because of a thick religious overtone of astronomy at the time and a lack of proper equipment to look directly at the sun, no one knew why exactly the sun had spots. Astronomers were able to look at the sun and see the spots with their naked eyes, but even on cloudy or hazy days when this was possible, it was still quite dangerous and people risked permanent blindness.

Eventually, the Dutch, in , invented the telescope, which allowed astronomers to finally get a good look at sunspots up close.

However, it was not until the 20th century that enough technology existed to be able to truly discover the mystery of the sunspot. Sunspots turned out to be areas of cooler zones on the surface of the sun. These spots are about one-third cooler than the rest of the surface and are protected by magnetic fields that stop the heat from being transmitted into the zone. The magnetic field is formed from underneath the sun's surface, but is able to project itself outside through the surface and all the way to the corona of the sun.

The sun has the largest effect on the climate that we enjoy on Earth. Without it there would be no light, resulting in no growth, since our climate largely relies on the sun to provide the energy needed for photosynthesis.

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Aquila, V. Isolating the roles of different forcing agents in global stratospheric temperature changes using model integrations with incrementally added single forcings. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmosphere s, 13 , — We value your feedback Help us improve our content Your Email Address.

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