Russ Steele
This is an interesting question. I have been investigating the connections between solar and volcanic activity over the last couple of months. There seems to be a sun/volcanic connection, resulting in significant changes in the global climate. Low sunspots seem to be correlated with increased volcanic activity, which cause long term cooler temperatures. Here are two papers I have been studying:
Download Solar volcanic correlation
Download Seismic activity and sunspots
Here is an article by Paul Hudson at the UK Times: Is Solar activity to blame for Japan's massive earthquake?
The massive earthquake that affected Japan this morning is one of the strongest in recorded history at 8.9 on the Richter scale.
With a number of powerful earthquakes recently it once again begs the question, is there a link between seismic activity and solar activity?
Recently we have witnessed a very unusual, prolonged period of low solar activity. Solar activity though has increased sharply in recent weeks.
Only yesterday I noticed that the number of recorded sunspots (a crude measure of solar activity) was in excess of 100 - compared with 6 months ago when the number of sunspots was zero.
In March last year a preliminary study was published from the Space and Science research centre in Florida.
A review of historical records was performed for 350 years of global volcanic activity (1650-2009) and seismic (earthquake) activity for the past 300 years (1700 to 2009) within the continental United States and then compared to the Sun's record of sunspots as a measure of solar activity.
According to this study, there exists a strong correlation between solar activity and the Earth's largest seismic and volcanic events.
They found an impressive degree of correlation for global volcanic activity (>80.6%) and for the largest USA earthquakes (100% of the top 7 most powerful) versus solar activity lows.
According to another study, published in Earth and Planetary Science letters, solar activity, as indicated by sunspots, radio noise and geomagnetic indices, plays a significant but by no means exclusive role in the triggering of earthquakes, with maximum quake frequency occurring at times of moderately high and fluctuating solar activity - which is what we have seen in the last few weeks.
Read the rest here.
Exit Questions: Do you think there is sun connection to earth quake or volcanic activity?