(full size video can be seen here)
On August 1, 2010, an entire hemisphere of the sun erupted. Filaments of magnetism snapped and exploded, shock waves raced across the stellar surface, billion-ton clouds of hot gas billowed into space. Astronomers knew they had witnessed something big.
It was so big, it may have shattered old ideas about solar activity.
“The August 1st event really opened our eyes,” says Karel Schrijver of Lockheed Martin’s Solar and Astrophysics Lab in Palo Alto, CA. “We see that solar storms can be global events, playing out on scales we scarcely imagined before.”
For the past three months, Schrijver has been working with fellow Lockheed-Martin solar physicist Alan Title to understand what happened during the “Great Eruption.” They had plenty of data: The event was recorded in unprecedented detail by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory and twin STEREO spacecraft. With several colleagues present to offer commentary, they outlined their findings at a recent press conference at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
[….]
“Not all eruptions are going to be global,” notes Guhathakurta. “But the global character of solar activity can no longer be ignored.”
Again, Science Daily makes this point in another article entitled, “Sun and Volcanic Eruptions Pace North Atlantic Climate Swings“:
When the scientists include actual changes in the solar forcing and the climate effect of volcanic eruptions in their model, they find a strong causal link between these external factors and variations in the Atlantic surface temperature. In particular, the study highlights volcanic eruptions as important for long-term variations in the Atlantic climate both through their strong cooling effect, but also through their direct impact on atmosphere and ocean circulation.