Hello people

I was wondering if anyone here knew much about sunspots
I've read so many articles and Google search results but I don't understand what their effect on earth is.
It has something to do with the earths and sun magnetic fields
Can someone please explain ?

Thanks

malb

Sunspots are cool areas on the sun caused by higher tha usual magnetic activity in the area of the sun spots.


here are some excerpts for the article at
Sunspots: Modern Research 6 of 7

hope this helps

From 1645 to 1715, there was a drastically reduced number of sunspots. This period of reduced solar activity, which was first noticed by G. Sporer and was later investigated by E.W. Maunder, is now called the Maunder Minimum. This period was also unusually cold on earth, and it has been referred to as the "Little Ice Age." This has led to some speculation that sunspot activity may affect the earth's climate. Similar periods of low solar activity seem to have occurred during the Spoerer Minimum (1420-1530), the Wolf Minimum (1280-1340), and the Oort minimum (1010-1050). Solar astronomers label solar cycles from one minimum to the next, and assign them numbers, starting at one, with the 1755-1766 cycle.











The Sun-Earth Connection
The sun's energy has a great effect on earth. Its light provides energy for photosynthesis in plants and algae, the basis for the food chain, which ultimately feeds almost all life on earth.

Sunspots also have an indirect but significant impact on life here on earth. As early as the nineteenth century, scientists noticed that high levels of activity on the sun, like flares and sunspots, were followed shortly by strong fluctuations in magnetic instruments on earth. They wondered what caused these changes.

Scientists today have discovered a lot about the way the sunspots affect the earth. According to Dearborn, "The sunspot itself, the dark region on the sun, doesn't by itself affect the earth. However, it is produced by a magnetic field, and that magnetic field doesn't just stop, it comes to the surface and expands out above the surface...." Hot material called plasma near a sunspot interacts with magnetic fields, and the plasma can burst up and out from the sun, in what is called a solar flare. Energetic particles, x-rays and magnetic fields from these solar flares bombard the earth in what are called geomagnetic storms. When these storms reach earth, they affect us in many ways.






Ordinarily, the earth's own magnetic field protects the earth from most of the sun's emissions. But during periods of intense sunspot activity, which coincide with solar flares and coronal mass ejections, the geomagnetic flow from the sun is much stronger. These magnetic storms produce heightened, spectacular displays of the Aurora Borealis and the Aurora Australis, otherwise known as the Northern and Southern Lights.


The rest o

Thanks ,good stuff!

Lets hope sunspots don't add to what's happening with global warming!

malb

All globaing warming is cause by the sun.