K. M. Hiremath

The Influence of Solar Activity on the Rainfall over India: Cycle-to-Cycle Variations

We use 130 years data for studying correlative effects due to solar cycle and activity phenomena on the occurrence of rainfall over India. For the period of different solar cycles, we compute the correlation coefficients and significance of correlation coefficients for the seasonal months of Jan–Feb (JF), Mar–May (MAM), June–Sept (JJAS) and Oct–Dec (OND) and,annual mean data. We find that: (i) with a moderate-to-high significance, Indian rainfall is correlated with the sunspot activity and, (ii) there is an overall trend that during the period of low sunspot activity, occurrence of rainfall is high compared to the period of high sunspot activity.We speculate in this study a possible physical connection between the occurrence of the rainfall and the sunspot activities and, the flux of galactic cosmic rays. Some of the negative correlations between the occurrences of the sunspot and rainfall activities obtained for different solar cycle periods are interpreted as effects of aerosols on the rain forming clouds due to either intermittent volcanic eruptions or due to intrusion of interstellar dust particles in the Earth’s atmosphere.

The flares associated with the dynamics of the sunspots

In the present study, we consider six years data of spot groups that have well developed leading and following spots obtained from the Kodaikanal Observatory white light pictures and occurrence of Hα flares. From the daily observations, we compute the variations in rotation rates, meridional velocity, the areas and longitudinal separations. We find that among all these variations, the occurrence of abnormal rotation rates (the rotation rates that have greater than 1σ and longitudinal minimum separation during the course of their evolution eventually lead to triggering of flares. We also find that the events of abnormal rotation rates, longitudinal minimum separation and the flares occur mainly during the 50–80% of the sunspots’ life span indicating magnetic reconnection probably below (0.935R⊙) the solar surface. Relevance of these results with the conventional theory of magnetic reconnection is briefly discussed.

The Extreme Solar Activity during October-November 2003

The positional measurements of sunspots from the Kodaikanal Observatory and Solar Geophysical data are used to study the association between occurrence of the abnormal activities of big sunspot groups that were observed during the period of October–November 2003 and occurrence of the flares. During the evolution of the sunspot groups, we have investigated the temporal variations in (i) areas; (ii) rotation rates; (iii) longitudinal extents; and (iv) number of small spots produced in a sunspot group. Among all these activity variations, we find that the spot groups that experience abnormal rotation rates during their evolutionary phases eventually trigger the flares.

Observational searches for chromospheric G-mode oscillations from CaII H-line observations

We have used a high spatial and temporal resolution of long time sequence of spectra in CaII H-line obtained at the Vacuum Tower Telescope (VTT) of the Sacramento Peak Observatory on a quiet region at the center of the solar disk over a large number of bright points and network elements to search for atmospheric (chromospheric) g-mode oscillations. An important parameter of the H-line profile, intensity at H2v(Ih2V), has been derived from a large number of line profiles. We derived the light curves of all the bright points and network elements. The light curves represent the main pulse with large intensity amplitude and followed by several follower pulses with lower intensity amplitudes. The light curves of these bright points would give an impression that one can as well draw curves towards and away from the highest peak (main pulse) showing an exponential growth and decay of the amplitudes. An exponential decaying function has been fitted for all the light curves of the bright points to determine the damping time of the modes that are more or less the same, and one value of the coefficient of exponent can represent reasonably well the decay for all the cases. The FFT analysis of temporal variation of both the bright points and the network elements indicates around 10-min periodicity. We speculate that this longer period of oscillation may be related to chromospheric g-mode oscillations.