Changes in the sun's activity cause earthquakes. Earthquakes happen around tectonic plate junctions, in the same place where volcanoes happen. If solar activity alters behaviour around tectonic plates it must affect volcanism too. Volcanoes cool earth's climate by ejecting tiny particles into the upper atmosphere which reflect sunlight away from earth. The last time we saw it dramatically was 29 years ago with the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century. It cooled the Northern hemisphere by at least ½°C, for more than 1 year.
"In this paper, we analyze 20 years of proton density and velocity data, as recorded by the SOHO satellite, and the worldwide seismicity in the corresponding period, as reported by the ISC-GEM catalogue. We found clear correlation between proton density and the occurrence of large earthquakes (M> 5.6), with a time shift of one day. The signifcance of such correlation is very high, with with probability to be wrong lower than 10-5 " [meaning one in 10000] ... In this paper, we demonstrate that it [the correlation] can likely be due to the efect of solar wind, modulating the proton density and hence the electrical potential between the ionosphere and the Earth ... our hypothesis only implies that the proton density would act as a further, small trigger to cause the fracture on already critically charged faults, thus producing the observed large scale earthquake correlation."
Links: Salon | Nature (paper, open access)
Note: Volcanos also happen at seismic fault lines.
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