Something I have been looking at for sometime is the correlation between earthquakes, volcanoes and climate.

After all, it stands to reason that a body as massive as the sun can have an impact on the earth, and however small this may be our geological balance is such that small changes in solar activity may be able to make a notable difference.

The link largely relates to the number of super-volcanoes which erupt during a sunspot minimum and how much dust these could spew into the atmosphere, causing global cooling; something which may be a) welcomed in order to reduced for a few years the global temperature, or b something which may be reviled as it could mask the amount to which human emissions are causing global warming to take place.

Now, I have written further about this in my weekly column in the Farmers Guardian newspaper, and I have copied this below.

A couple of things I’d like to reiterate from the article are how little we know about how the various larger scale cycles of the earth and wider Solar System impact on our weather.

And secondly how this may be seen my many climatologists as pseudo-science due to the complexity of such cycles and impacts.

I’ve absolute sympathy with these points of view, but we must remain open minded and courage further research as that is how science advances ...

Article By Simon Keeling to be published in Farmers Guardian, Friday 13th December 2019 ...

Volcanoes, Earthquakes, Weather & Sunspots

Is there a connection between solar activity, earthquakes and volcanoes? Don’t say I avoid the difficult questions!

One of the problems with meteorologically science, and to some extent the wider geoscience subject, is that sometimes absolutes are hard to find. There can be a very opaque area between what can be proved and what is supposition, as well as doubt about what may occur as a direct result of a phenomena and what might be an indirect consequence.

We are presently at the minimum of the current sunspot cycle, which when compared with other recent cycles has proved itself to be very quiet, even when at it’s maximum a few years ago.

An experienced and deeply knowledgable colleague, Dr. Joe D’Aleo of Weatherbell wrote this week about how there appears to be a correlation between a very low sunspot minimum and the eruptions of super-volcanoes. 

He states how Tambora occurred during the Dalton minimum in the early 1800’s (coinciding with a very cold climatological period). The largest eruption of the 20th Century, Novarupta, occurred at the lowest part of the solar cycle in the early 1900’s. And that most famous of eruptions, Krakatoa in 1883 occurred in the earlier part of the same minimum.

A paper published in the Journal of Geophysics research in 1989 by Stothers looked at the history of volcanic eruption from 1500 to 1980 and foound two weak, but significant periods which seem to coincide with volcanic activity and an increase in smaller earthquakes.

Now, it’s interesting to note that the current solar minimum period has been very quite with regards to volcanoes and earthquakes, hence dust released into the atmosphere by such events has been limited and so no cooling has taken place as a result.

Perhaps we should be on stand-by for the possibility of a major eruption and large earthquakes as the earth reminds us who is boss, and how little science understands of such connections.

**ends**