Word: solarity
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Solar Max has undermined those arguments. A sensitive radiometer aboard the satellite has confirmed that between 1980 and 1986 average solar output declined one-tenth of 1%, then leveled off, and now has begun to climb. The finding strongly suggests that solar radiation varies with the sunspot cycle and that the solar constant is not that constant after...
Like a giant nuclear-fusion furnace in the sky, the sun radiates stupendous amounts of energy. Some of it departs in the form of speeding particles, mostly electrons and protons, that form a solar wind blowing from the sun in all directions. It is this continuously flowing wind that feeds particles into the earth's Van Allen radiation belts and distorts the terrestrial magnetic field into a teardrop shape. It also sets off the frequent minor auroral displays visible at higher latitudes...
Also radiating from the solar surface is energy in the form of visible light, ultraviolet and X rays. Enough of this energy penetrates the atmosphere to deliver some 100 trillion kW of power to the earth. Reduced to more comprehensible terms, solar radiation amounts to 1.35 kW falling on every square meter of earth, a number that scientists call the solar constant...
...production was high and the sun apparently quiescent. But did this mean that all of these periods were times of extreme cold? Many scientists doubted it, suggesting that the correlation between the Maunder minimum and the little ice age might be nothing more than sheer coincidence. Changes in solar cyclic activity, the doubters argued, were not necessarily accompanied by variations in the sun's output of heat and light and probably did not affect terrestrial weather and climate...
...small a cyclic change able to have a noticeable effect on weather? Two scientists suspect it may. Karin Labitzke of Berlin's Free University and NCAR's Van Loon have discovered a relationship between the solar cycle and the stratospheric winds over the tropics. During a 28-month period, these winds reverse direction, blowing half the time from the east, the other half from the west, a phenomenon meteorologists call the QBO, or quasi-biennial oscillation. Depending on the direction of the QBO flow, Labitzke and Van Loon found, solar maximums and minimums seem linked to changes in air pressure...