Sunspot activity and Atlantic tropical cyclones

A hurricane season is affected by several oceanic-atmospheric variables that all play a role in the number and intensity of tropical cyclones. Hurricanes have been heavily studied to find information about their thermodynamics and also to be able to accurately forecast an entire hurricane season. Sunspots have also been examined to determine if a link is present between solar irradiance and hurricanes.

This paper builds on previous work in the study between sunspots and hurricanes and focuses on different variables during a hurricane season and correlating those variables to sunspots. It is found that sunspots do not play a major role in hurricane activity. A correlation of only -0.0288 between number of storms and sunspot activity was found; this validates previous research done by Elsner et al (1999).

Other yearly variables were correlated to find if sunspots affected hurricane intensity or frequency. These correlations overall were very weak with the highest correlation being found in maximum wind speed where the correlation was 0.1193. This correlation jumps to 0.4870 when only sunspot maximum and minimum years are analyzed; however, this strong correlation breaks down when extremes in sunspot number are correlated to 0.1343. The results indicate that there are other atmospheric-oceanic interactions that are dominating the hurricane season and thus they all should be analyzed in conjunction with sunspots to determine the importance of each variable to a tropical season.