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The Spörer Minimum was a 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".[1] 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.[2]
| Event | Start | End |
|---|---|---|
| Oort minimum [2] | 1010 | 1050 |
| Oort minimum (see Medieval Warm Period) | 1040 | 1080 |
| Medieval maximum (see Medieval Warm Period) | 1100 | 1250 |
| Wolf minimum | 1280 | 1350 |
| Spörer Minimum | 1460 | 1550 |
| Maunder Minimum | 1645 | 1715 |
| Dalton Minimum | 1790 | 1820 |
| Modern Maximum | 1950 | ongoing |
| Little Ice Age [3][4][5][6] | 1350 | 1850 |
Like the subsequent Maunder Minimum, the Spörer Minimum coincided with a time when Earth's climate was colder than average. This correlation has generated hypotheses that low solar activity produces cooler than average global temperatures.[7] Though a specific mechanism by which solar activity results in climate change has not been established,[3] one theory is modification of the Arctic Oscillation/North Atlantic Oscillation due to a change in solar output.[8]
Wilfried Schröder published a table of observed aurora borealis during the Spörer Minimum which showed that the solar cycle was active (see: Wilfried Schröder, Annals Geophys. 1994)
For details on solar activity see: solar variation.
[edit] References
- ^ Eddy, J. A., "The Maunder Minimum", Science 18 June 1976: Vol. 192. no. 4245, pp. 1189–1202, PDF Copy
- ^ a b "History of Sunspot Observations". http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/sun/activity/sunspot_history.html&edu=high. Retrieved 04-02-2009. The Spörer Minimum (1420 to 1570), named after the German astronomer Gustav Spörer.
- ^ a b "The Medieval Warm Period". http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/climate/medieval_warm_period.html&edu=high. Retrieved 04-02-2009. Little Ice Age (1350-1850 A.D.)
- ^ "What was the Little Ice Age?". http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ctl/resource1000.html. Retrieved 04-03-2009. The Little Ice Age (or LIA) refers to a period between 1350 and 1900.
- ^ Mann, Michael E. (2002). "Little Ice Age". Encyclopedia of Global Environmental Change. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester. pp. 504–509. ISBN 0-471-97796-9. http://holocene.meteo.psu.edu/shared/articles/littleiceage.pdf. Discusses the difficulty in assigning dates for the LIA. Suggests that 1400–1900 seems reasonable.
- ^ "Little Ice Age". WikiPedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age. Retrieved 04-03-2009. The following dates are presented as possible starts for the Little Ice Age: 1250, 1300, 1315, 1550, 1650.
- ^ "The Sun's Chilly Impact on Earth". December 6, 2001. http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20011206/. Retrieved 04-04-2009. Low solar activity could have triggered a Little Ice Age.
- ^ Shindell, T.; Schmidt, A.; Mann, E.; Rind, D.; Waple, A. (Dec 2001). "Solar Forcing of Regional Climate Change During the Maunder Minimum". Science 294 (5549): 2149–2152. Bibcode 2001Sci...294.2149S. doi:10.1126/science.1064363. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 11739952. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/294/5549/2149.
