What is Maunder Minimum in the sunspot cycle?
The Maunder Minimum, also known as the “prolonged sunspot minimum”, was a period around 1645 to 1715 during which sunspots became exceedingly rare. This contrasts with the typical 40,000–50,000 sunspots seen in modern times over a similar timespan.
What is a solar minimum stage?
Solar minimum is the period of least solar activity in the 11-year solar cycle of the Sun. The date of the minimum is described by a smoothed average over 12 months of sunspot activity, so identifying the date of the solar minimum usually can only happen 6 months after the minimum takes place.
What happens during Maunder Minimum?
Maunder minimum, unexplained period of drastically reduced sunspot activity that occurred between 1645 and 1715. Sunspot activity waxes and wanes with roughly an 11-year cycle. In 1894 the English astronomer Edward Walter Maunder pointed out that very few sunspots had been observed between 1645 and 1715.
What is the Maunder Minimum why is it of interest?
The existence of the Maunder minimum is interesting on purely astrophysical grounds, because it suggests that the regular rise and fall of sunspots observed from 1715 all the way through to the present day may not be a permanent, or even typical, aspect of solar behavior.
How is the Maunder Minimum related to climate?
In the solar physics literature, the MM is sometimes associated with a period of cooler global temperatures, referred to as the Little Ice Age (LIA), and thus taken as compelling evidence of a large, direct solar influence on climate.
What is the solar maximum and minimum?
The total number of sunspots has long been known to vary with an approximately 11-year repetition known as the solar cycle—going from low to high and then high to low. The peak of sunspot activity is known as solar maximum and the low is known as solar minimum.
Are solar panels max or min?
On average, the solar cycle takes about 11 years to go from one solar maximum to the next, with duration observed varying from 9 to 14 years….Solar minimum events and approximate dates.
| Event | Start | End |
|---|---|---|
| Spörer Minimum | 1450 | 1550 |
| Maunder Minimum | 1645 | 1715 |
| Dalton Minimum | 1790 | 1820 |
| Modern Maximum | 1914 | 2008 |
How does the Maunder Minimum affect the earth?
Since during the Maunder Minimum the Sun emitted less radiation, in total, including strong ultraviolet emission, less ozone was formed affecting planetary atmosphere waves, the giant wiggles in the jet stream. Shindell et al. [4. Solar forcing of regional climate change during the Maunder minimum.
When did the Maunder Minimum happen?
1645 – 1715
Maunder Minimum/Periods
What is the Spörer Minimum?
The Spörer Minimum is a hypothesized 90-year span of low solar activity, from about 1460 until 1550, which was identified and named by John A. Eddy in a landmark 1976 paper published in Science titled “The Maunder Minimum”.
What is the carbon-14 method used to identify the Spörer Minimum?
The carbon-14 method used by Spörer to identify the minimum makes use of the fact that high solar activity is correlated with low production of carbon-14 in the atmosphere. Wilfried Schröder published a table of observed aurora borealis during the Spörer Minimum which showed that the solar cycle was active.
Why is it called the Spörer event?
It occurred before sunspots had been directly observed and was discovered instead by analysis of the proportion of carbon-14 in tree rings, which is strongly correlated with solar activity. It is named for the German astronomer Gustav Spörer. Solar activity events recorded in radiocarbon.
Is the 11-year solar cycle still prominent in the carbon-14 record?
Miyahara et al. likewise found the 11-year solar cycle was still prominently detected in the carbon-14 record even during the minimum. The amplitude of the 11-year cycle seems to have been modulated only from 1455 to 1510.