Solar flares and their relationship to global warming

¶ … solar flares and how they go on to cause global warming. Global warming has been an ongoing phenomenon and there are many reasons it has occurred. Apart from the green house effect, global warming could have been due to the solar flares that have occurred. Different researches and theories regarding this matter are discussed in the paper.

Solar Flare

Global warming is a phenomenon that has amazed and frightened everyone ever since it came into being. The consequences and end results of global warming is what goes on to alarm and frighten everyone on earth. If looked at it literally, global warming is basically in increase in the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere. This change and elevation has been occurring ever since the 19th century and is known to increase even more. The change in the global temperature is dangerous because it goes onto increase the sea levels and alterations precipitation, melting of glacier and possible risks of floods around the world. Global warming can even cause a spread of the deserts (Lu, Vecchi and Reichler 6)

People have come with varied causes of global warming. Some natural causes are the release of methane gas from the wetlands and the arctic tundra. It has been proposed that the temperature of the earth is influenced by the activities that man carries out. (Michaels 222) Others have proposed that this is due to the climate change that the earth goes through after a certain amount of time. Activities like combusting fossil fuels, cutting down trees and emitting carbon dioxide from the industries is a major has contributed to global warming. Pollution which occurs due to burning of fossil fuels is a major cause. A lot of things like increased population and increased need for transportation require more and more fossil fuels to be burned

Out of all the causes listed above, a solar flare could be a probable cause of causing global warming. A solar flare is basically the release of energy from the sun that causes a very bright light to be observed over the sun's surface. It has been postulated that the release of energy is equivalent to millions of megatons of TNT. The energy release has been estimated to b e about 6X10^25 joules of energy. There is a release of CME energy which is basically coronal mass ejection. (Kopp, Lawrence, and Rottman) The flare that is ejected is actually an amalgamation of electrons, atoms and ions through the layers of the sun into space. If it has been released by the sun, eventually it is bound to reach the earth as well.

Solar flares basically go on to make an impact on the different layers of the atmosphere in the solar system. Radiations are basically made that travel all throughout the electromagnetic spectrum at different wavelengths. The energy that is transmitted from a single flare for instance is spread over different frequency ranges in the electromagnetic spectrum. Due to this reason, most of the flares aren't detectable from the naked eye and require the use of varied instruments. There need to be active sunspots and places with a lot of energy in case a flare has to be initiated. Thus, it has been studied that flares actually occur in active areas around sun spots. Sun spots are places where high energy magnetic fields go through the photosphere to attach the corona to the interior of the sun.

Many people have often wondered what causes solar flares. The flares basically occur when charged particles especially electrons in an active state go on to interact with the plasma medium. Research states that the charged particles happen to be in active or an accelerated state due to the magnetic reconnection. There are many loops of magnetic lines of force on the son that create more and more magnetic reconnections. The release of energy in this reconnection is thus responsible for the charging of these active particles. The magnetic field and the activated materials may go on to violently expand outwards thus giving the coronal mass ejection mentioned before. These postulations further support the fact that solar flares are normally common in areas where the magnetic fields are stronger than the average.

Solar flares have been occurring ever since the sun's 4.6 billion year history. However, it hasn't been long since the scientist figure out details about the solar flares. Even though solar flares are the largest explosion occurring in the solar system, it is the CME's that go on to damage the earth. (DeForest) The surface of the earth is protected quite well from the magnetic field of the atmosphere and of Earth itself. Regardless, the modern technology that we have kept up there can be damaged to quite an extent from the upsets in solar weather. The sun observing and the earth observing space craft's have been damaged by the solar flares that have occurred. Spacecrafts have also found material within in space that seems to be coming from spacecrafts damaged by huge solar flares that occurred in 2003. In October, 2003, different areas on the sun began to give rise to what later was discovered as 60 solar flares. ("Huge Solar Flares Hit" 366) These regions which later were declared as sunspots went on to cover about 0.6% of the surface of the sun. These solar flares went on to damage about 20 satellites in the orbit of the Earth. The high magnetic field s linked with the flares even went on to cause power outage in Sweden and in other areas in the Arctic. Some of them were so powerful that it damaged some of the air craft's orbiting Mars. All this shows that the solar flares are capable of causing a lot of damage.

Despite the proposed etiology for an increase in the average global temperature, there is still a lot of debate on what the real cause is. The popular media always insists on the cause being resolved and that global warming cannot be stopped. Regardless, some of the scientists are keen on working and giving new causes and better solutions to stop global warming.

It has been postulated that the changes in the temperature of the earth have a direct link to two components of the dynamics of the sun. One of the aspects is the long-term solar cycles however one aspect is the short-term statistical fluctuation in the sun's radiance. (Scafetta and West 50) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states that solar variability's contribution to global warming is not significant and is quite negligible. Ever since the start of the industrial era, a large majority believes that global warming is a result of increase greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

The atmosphere of the earth, oceans, and landmasses go on to absorb and then re scatter the total solar irradiance (TSI) This is done through the geochemical, reactive dynamic and nonlinear hydrothermal processes that will eventually go on to give a cumulative average temperature of the earth. (Scafetta and West 50) A good way to see the link of solar dynamics and the earth's temperature is to study the fluctuations in the earth's temperature. If a monthly review is done of the abnormal fluctuations of the earth's temperature, then many scientists render this data irrelevant. Many people think that there is no use in studying the monthly temperature changes when studying the changes yearly or after a certain number of years give a clearer idea about what is happening. If these fluctuations are studied based on the central limit theorem, then these fluctuation are proposed to be Gaussian. However, there are some that show non-Gaussian behavior, The unexplained behavior therefore made scientists study these fluctuations and their links to global warming in more detail.

The fluctuation dissipation theorem states that response of a network to an alarm is analyzed by the network's undisturbed autocorrelation function. If one goes on to look at the variations in the TSI, then we know exactly why these variations are caused. The variations are due changes in the duration, number and also the intensity of the solar flares and sunspots. They also occur due to the varied time intervals between the bright faculae and the dark spots. It has been seen that the time variation in the TSI give rise to similar variations in the average temperature of the Earth. These variations amalgamate to produce the trends that increase or decrease the temperature of the earth for thousands of years. (Scafetta and West 50) Thus, the small term variations or the monthly changes aren't just irrelevant data but they provide a substantial link to the variations in the TSI.

Therefore, there has been a link created between the changing dynamics of the earth and the sun. To prove this link with data, it has been shown that the stochastic properties of the earth's temperature are by far linked to the data of the TSI. (Scafetta and West 248701) Therefore, there must be a direct correlation between the disruptions of the Sun and the earth because only then can the temperature anomalies can adopt the data of the TSI. The fluctuations in the TSI with respect to the solar flare time series and also the earth's average temperature time series depict the inverse power-law statistical distribution. (Scafetta and West 50) The inverse power law index that comes out for the anomaly time data and the solar flare data is exactly the same. Testing the statistics of the TSI and the earth's temperature was carried out by Paul Levy before the second world war. The statistics of the solar flare were present in such a form that they showed to disturb the average global temperature fluctuations on Earth. Consequently, it was seen that the data of the temperature anomalies inherited similar statistical structure as was present in the solar flare details. (Scafetta and West 248701) Since it is a matter of solar cycles, it has also been postulated that the sun's impact on the Earth is quite subtle. (Scafetta and West 51) This is because this impact is not merely a matter of energy transport but it involves transfer of information. Therefore, the non-equilibrium thermodynamic models state that the Sun has a much larger role in affecting the earth's temperature than the IPCC report states. (Scafetta and West 51) It has been concluded that the Sun is responsible for about 69% of the increase in the average global temperature. (Scafetta and West D24S03 )

Seeing how we have established several significant linkages to the earth's temperature being linked to solar temperatures, then it is possible that global warming can cure itself. Many scientists have predicted that the Sun will cool off. This cooling off could thus stabilize the earth's temperature and therefore prevent the malicious effects of global warming. (Scafetta and West 51)

The role of solar forcing was on earth temperatures during four varied periods of the industrial times were studied by utilizing a sun-climate coupling model. Two different solar irradiance satellite composites, mainly the PMOD and ACRIM were used. It was hypothesized that the sun contributed to about 45-50% of the global warming caused from 1900 to the year 2000. These results were further confirmed by the anthropogenic-added climate forcing has played a vital role in the temperature changes that have occurred in the last century. (Scafetta and West, 1)

There are still many arguments and theories that go against what Scaffeta and West has proposed. Hansen et al. (4347) thinks that solar forces might have had a pivotal role in causing global warming in the past, but things are quite different now. They believe that from the years 1950-200, global warming has been caused by the greenhouse gas effect. White et al. believes that some studies have miscalculated the impact of solar forces on the global warming by using the theoretical climate models.

A Russian scientist went into depths of this matter and went on to conclude that global warming is in fact caused by solar flares. Habibullo Abdusamatov who is the head in the space research laboratory in St. Petersburg-based Pulkovo observatory concluded that global warming is happening due to an increase in the sun's activity. He states that seeing how levels of solar radiation have increased a lot in the last century, they have gone to increase the global temperature of the earth. This view does surely contradict what the IPCC and many other scientists conclude about the global warming issues. The major assumption was that global warming is caused by human activity. It has been known that high temperatures give stimulus to more green house gases going in the atmosphere and being trapped. Abdusamatov stated that the entire relationship has been interpreted in the wrong way and the effect is being mistaken for the cause. He thinks that the increased temperature was the initiating factor that caused more and more gases to go into the atmosphere due to the positive feedback effect.

Abdusamatov stated that if the ice cores form wells in Antarctica and Greenland are examined closely, they will depict that global warming has also occurred two hundred years ago. Two hundred years ago there were no industries or green house effect, then what could have possibly caused the global warming? Many scientists have gone to study samples of air and snow in2 these ancient places to study the global carbon dioxide concentrations. He claimed that the upper layers of the world's oceans are cooling down now. This shows that the global warming which once was heating up the earth is decreasing now. It also shows that the Earth has hit the highest It was going to go and is now cooling down. He predicts that from the year 2012-2015, The earth will face a decrease in the mounts of solar energy and consequently a decrease in the global temperature as well. This means that by the year 2040, there would be a deep freeze that would last till 2060.

Where some say that solar flares are responsible for global warming, there is always a different side to the story. The major argument for why solar flares cannot be responsible for global warming is that these waves of energy are reflected back into the space. It is true that the solar flares and the coronal mass ejections spread a lot of energy into the Earth's outermost layer of atmosphere. However, most of the energy is thrown back by the Earth's magnetic field. Regardless of these facts, It was also seen that the heat wave that engulfed United States in March 2010 matches with the numerous solar flares that came about at that time. Seeing how these two events did coincide, there has to be a link with solar flares and global warming.

As mentioned before, most of the energy of the solar flares cannot be seen from the naked eye. The solar storms that occurred on March 8th through March 10th were comprised of lights from the visible to the UV end of the spectrum. Thus, even though these storms could not be measured as such it is true that they transferred a lot of charged particles through space and eventually to the magnetic field of the earth. It has been proposed that the magnetic field of the earth, the thermosphere, is warmed by the stream of particles that the solar flare emits.