sun-weather connection
- Carbon - 14 abundance also tracks solar activity
- radioactive C stored in tree rings
- changes in C-14 correlated with
- Maunder Minimum
- Advance’s of Alpine glaciers S&T vugraph, bottom
- period around 1000 AD when Greenland was inhabited and Leif Ericson visited America
- Correlations of sunspots with weather in the past do not prove there is a causal relationship
- could just be a coincidence
- but (tiny) variations of the solar luminosity have been measured and found to be correlated with solar activity
- Sun slightly more luminous during maximum activity
- directly opposite what one would expect, since sunspots are dark
- Increased luminosity could warm the Earth
- Wise to keep one’s eye on this in the future