Astronomy Term Assignment

The belief that solar variation can be correlated to recent global warming trends has become a highly debated topic in the scientific community. By comparing and charting historical sunspot data with climate models as well as recorded data, it has become the belief of many scientists that the increase in solar variation, or the amount of energy emitted by the sun, affects global temperatures. Conversely, the solar variation theory has been met with great skepticism. One argument says that current insolation data actually proves the theory of global dimming, which is the reduction of the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface. Further, the belief that much of the data gathering and results are vulnerable to bias, is an ever increasing dilemma as it relates to the global warming forum.

For my own research i chose to observe Burlington, VT. As far as temperature, Burlington is considered to have a moderate climate for Vermont, a state known for cold weather; who's average temperatures are listed as 22 degrees in January and 70 degrees July. Each day between the date of September, 27 2005 and December 1, 2005, I collected the daily sunspot number for the visible surface of the sun from www.spaceweather.com and also recorded the departure from the normal for the average daily temperature from the National Weather Service via the NOAA. While gathering my data I was interested to see the patterns and correlations I could draw from these two data-sets. My first observational inference was that sunspot data did not seem to follow much of a particular pattern. It wasn't until I got further in my research where i realized that these sunspot numbers were known to fluctuate in extreme rhythmic patterns, where they rise and fall tightly almost like the SIN curves of my previous Algebra II life.

It was my initial hypothesis that a sunspot on the Sun's surface would reduce the Earth's temperature. My basic understanding went as far as to tell me that the more dark spots on the sun there were the less area there would be to give off solar radiation, therefore resulting in decreased solar intensity . Again, it was until I researched more on the topic of solar variability that I learned that the effect of the spots was actually opposite, and that the sunspots actually caused the surrounding areas to become brighter resulting in increased intensity. From my data-sets and my chart (Fig. 1) I do reinforce this correlation,