Using satellite data from NASA’s Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) satellite, researchers found that between 2004 and 2007, low solar activity actually resulted in more energy and visible light reaching the Earth, warming our climate. The findings are published today in the journal Nature.

Solar activity increases and decreases over a cycle that lasts roughly 11 years. Even after centuries of study, we have only begun to get a complete picture of the process. From a corresponding article in Nature:

Sunspots, dark areas of reduced surface temperature on the Sun caused by intense magnetic activity, are the best-known visible manifestation of the 11-year solar cycle. They have been regularly observed and recorded since the dawn of modern astronomy in the seventeenth century. But measurements of the wavelengths of solar radiation have until now been scant.

Instruments on the SORCE satellite measure the Sun’s energy output at many different wavelengths of light. Researchers fed the data from SORCE into an existing computer model of Earth’s atmosphere and compared their results with the results obtained using earlier, less comprehensive, data on the solar spectrum.

And the results were shocking. From New Scientist:

Previous studies have shown that Earth is normally cooler during solar minima. Yet the model suggested that more solar energy reached the planet’s surface during the period, warming it by about 0.05°C.

This surprising finding led the researchers to believe that the inverse might also be true: in periods when the Sun’s activity increases, it might tend to cool, rather than warm, Earth. But, they warn, more data are needed.

Joanna Haigh, an atmospheric physicist at Imperial College London and lead author of the study, said:

These results are challenging what we thought we knew about the Sun’s effect on our climate. However, they only show us a snapshot of the Sun’s activity and its behavior over the three years of our study could be an anomaly.

We cannot jump to any conclusions based on what we have found during this comparatively short period and we need to carry out further studies to explore the Sun’s activity, and the patterns that we have uncovered, on longer timescales. However, if further studies find the same pattern over a longer period of time, this could suggest that we may have overestimated the Sun’s role in warming the planet, rather than underestimating it.

In addition, Martin Dameris, an atmospheric scientist at the German Aerospace Center, warns that human activity still lies at the heart of our current warming trend. As quoted in the Nature article:

The findings could prove very significant when it comes to understanding, and quantifying, natural climate fluctuations. But no matter how you look at it, the Sun’s influence on current climate change is at best a small natural add-on to man-made greenhouse warming.

According to Universe Today:

There was a C3-class solar flare, a solar tsunami, multiple filaments of magnetism lifting off the stellar surface, large-scale shaking of the solar corona, radio bursts, a coronal mass ejection (CME) and more.

(In a separate, very recent post, Universe Today reported that there are actually four CMEs.)

Solar scientists are thrilled! “This has been an unusually quiet solar cycle,”(Universe Today) and the sun is just now waking up, heading for its solar max in May 2013.

This “awesome solar phenomena”(Wired) is also good news for us non-scientists. Wired reports that:

The event also caused a coronal mass ejection to head directly toward earth, which may mean people in the northern latitudes will be treated to auroras around August 3.

Can’t solar flares also mean trouble? This one isn’t big enough. According to MSNBC:

The X-ray blast rated a C3 on the Space Weather Prediction Center’s scale, which suggests there’ll be no disruption for power grids, satellites, astronauts on the International Space Station or navigation services on airplanes.

So depending on your location (San Francisco seems too far south in the current NOAA POES satellite image), sit back, take a look at the skies tonight and tomorrow and enjoy the pretty picture show. (Universe Today has just posted possible times of the auroras.)  And even if you can’t see the auroras, you can see SDO’s amazing video of the activity here or here.

Image: NASA/SDO