Solar Disturbances and Interdiurnal Variations of Atmospheric Pressure*

Abstract

Summary The conclusion is that interdiurnal variability of atmospheric pressure at New Haven appears to show a mathematically significant correlation with the position of sunspots on the disk of the sun as seen from the earth. The correlation indicates a double annual cycle in which high latitude of spots is associated with high barometric variability in summer and winter at about the time of the solstices and with low barometric variability in the spring and fall near the time when one or the other axis of the sun points most nearly to the earth. Whether the relationship thus suggested is thermal or electrical, or whether it has any causal connection with the axes of either the earth or the sun, we do not know. The important fact is that this first investigation of the latitude of sunspots in relation to barometric variability suggests that a hidden, and perhaps hitherto unrecognized factor, manifested in the form of the latitudinal location of sunspots, is somehow imposed upon the terrestrial factors which lead to interdiurnal changes of barometric pressure.