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Conclusions
- There is some correlation between earthquakes and sunspots: there seems to be a peak in earthquakes around each sunspot maximum (correlation 0.34, no time lag). There is also some correlation between earthquakes and hurricanes: 0.35 (time lag -2 years).
- Volcanic eruptions do not correlate with other events, including earthquakes (which was my original hypothesis), but there seems to be a small increase in the number of eruptions every 5-8 years.
- There is a general increase in the number of droughts around the sunspots maximum. A correlation between droughts and sunspots is 0.32 (no time lag). There is also a smaller correlation, 0.29, between droughts and hurricanes (time lag -2 years). Also droughts have their maximum every 3-6 years, which is probably somewhat related to El Nino, (although I have not checked this yet).
- Hurricanes correlate with sunspots in a rather unusual way: there are about two hurricane cycles in every sunspot cycle. The separation of hurricane data into two parts (years around the solar maximum and years around the solar minimum) produced a correlation of 0.49 (with the 1 year time lag) for the first set of data and an anti-correlation, -0.35, for the second set of data (also with the 1 year time lag).
- When the yearly numbers of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, droughts and hurricanes are added together, there is a certain periodicity in this sum. There seems to be a general increase in the total number of all events as the number of sunspots goes up, and when the number of sunspot declines, there is a general decrease in this sum. This answers ‘yes’ to my question of whether there are any ‘bad years’ when all natural disasters and weather anomalies seem to happen at once. Judging by this observation, the next period when some of these disasters/weather anomalies significantly increase in number or happen at the same time can be probably expected during the next sunspot maximum - around 2011.