NEWS: Does rainfall vary with sunspot activity?

[Guest guest]

|| Om Gurave Namah ||Dear Jyotishas, Maybe this following article may find your interest. Sun Spots has a periodicity of 11 Years. This is associated with Rudra and Ardra Nakshatra.It's interesting to note how the rain clouds are impregnated by the Solar and cosmic winds ( Some

researchers have suggested that galactic cosmic rays could seed clouds

by ionising particles )Chandogya_upanishadhttp://www.sankaracharya.org/chandogya_upanishad_2.php#1

Chapter X — The Various Paths followed after Death 6.

" Having dwelt there in the lunar world till their good works are

consumed, they return again the same way they came. They

first reach the akasa and from the akasa the air. Having become

air, they become smoke; having become smoke, they become

mist;

" Having become mist, they become cloud; having become

cloud, they fall as rain—water. Then they are born as rice and

barley, herbs and trees, sesamum and beans. Thence the exit is

most difficult; for whoever capable of begetting children eats

that food and injects semen, they become like unto him. Warm RegardsSanjay Phttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunspot

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026814.100?feedId=space_rss20

 

Does rainfall vary with sunspot activity?

 

 

08 November 2008

by

Anil Ananthaswamy

Magazine issue 2681. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.

 

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Climate Change

Topic Guide

 

THE

sun is nearly 150 million kilometres away, but it seems to have Earth's

rivers on a leash. The flow of a huge South American river - and thus

the rainfall that feeds it - appears to rise and fall with the number

of sunspots.

Though scientists reject the climate sceptics' assertion that the sun's activity can explain global warming,

many have wondered whether it can affect rainfall. No one has been able

to test this, though, as it has proved difficult to collate rainfall

measurements over long timescales and areas large enough to rule out

local variations.

Pablo

Mauas of the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina and his colleagues

decided to take a different tack by studying the 4000-kilometre-long

Paraná river in South America. It has the fourth-largest streamflow in

the world and so acts as an indirect indicator of rainfall right across

the continent. A gauging station in Corrientes, Argentina, has been

measuring the Paraná's streamflow for trade ships since 1904 - unlike

on similarly large rivers such as the Amazon or Congo. That meant the

team had access to a century's worth of daily measurements.

Mauas's

team compared the streamflow with an indicator of solar activity: the

number of sunspots seen each year on the sun's surface. The more there

are, the greater the sun's activity. The researchers found that over a

timescale of decades, the streamflow in the Paraná increased and

decreased in accordance with the number of sunspots. " There is less

than a 0.01 per cent chance that this correlation is by chance, " says

Mauas (Physical Review Letters, vol 101, p 168501).

 

 

The streamflow of the Paraná river increased and decreased in accordance with the number of sunspots

 

 

Exactly

how the sun might affect precipitation on Earth is not clear. Some

researchers have suggested that galactic cosmic rays could seed clouds

by ionising particles in the atmosphere and that the solar wind could modulate the number of rays

reaching Earth. However, in this scenario rainfall would be higher at

times of low solar activity, as this creates less solar wind and hence

a greater flow of cloud-seeding cosmic rays.

Climate

scientist Jonathan Overpeck of the University of Arizona in Tucson

speculates that solar irradiance - the average incoming solar radiation

- might be affecting the Paraná's streamflow by influencing the

hydrological cycle in the tropics and sub-tropics. " More work is

clearly needed to see if the link is real, " he says.

Overpeck

also cautions that the study should not be used to link any variability

in the sun's activity to global warming, because it makes no link

between the sun and global surface air temperature. " This is a common

misconception that needs to be cleared up, " he says. " There is no such

corresponding trend in the solar irradiance data as measured with

satellites. "