Influence of solar magnetic activity on the North American temperature record

TL;DR

This study investigates how solar magnetic activity influences North American temperature records, revealing spatial variations and proposing a mechanism for latitudinal differences based on historical sunspot data.

Contribution

It introduces a method to quantify solar influence on regional temperatures using wavelet analysis of sunspot numbers and correlates this with geographic factors.

Findings

Solar activity correlates with temperature variations across North America.

Latitudinal and elevation factors affect the solar dependence of temperature.

A proposed mechanism explains the geographic variation in solar influence.

Abstract

The effect of solar magnetic activity on the yearly mean average temperature is extracted from the historical record for much of North America. The level of solar activity is derived from the international sunspot number by the renormalized continuous wavelet transform using the Morlet basis to provide a running estimate of the power associated with the magnetic cycle. The solar activity gives the abscissa for a scatter plot of temperature for each station, from which the solar dependence and mean temperature are extracted. These parameters are then plotted against the latitude, longitude, and elevation for each station, revealing a dependence of their values on geophysical location. A mechanism to explain the latitudinal variation of the solar dependence is suggested.