Investigation of the Impact of Sunspots on Earth’s Climate

Abstract

World history of the effect of climate change on humanity is enough witness to attest to its lethal effects. Various researches have delved into the investigation of the probable causes of variation in earth’s climatic condition, with majority of such researches concentrating more on the impact of the changes in the reflectivity of earth’s atmosphere, surface and increase in the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere chiefly propelled by human inducement, while little has been done to investigate the impact of the temporary phenomena on the photosphere of the Sun that appears visibly as dark spots compared to surrounding regions (Sunspots). Using Global sunspots and annual temperature anomalies data of 1900 - 2014, attempt has been made in this research to investigate temporal variation of the trend of sunspots and their impact on earth’s climate since temperature is one of the basic indices that define climate while the sun is the fundamental source of energy that drives our climate system. The result shows that the earth is getting warmer over the years as increase in years lead to increase in annual temperature anomaly. A very weak correlation was observed between the global mean sunspot number and the annual temperature anomaly while there is a positive correlation between the global mean sunspot number and the Earth’s temperature though very weak and statistically insignificant. It is thus concluded that the direct impact of sunspots on Earth’s anomaly is very weak, minimal and at best, indirect.