Temperatures hover between 10,000 and 300,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and the "air" is mostly ionized hydrogen, but the billowing outer layers of the sun have weather patterns strangely reminiscent of those on Earth. Using data from the SOHO spacecraft, Deborah Haber and Brad Hindman of the University of Colorado have discovered gentle winds, jet streams, and vast hurricanes whose raging may eventually make itself felt here, 93 million miles away.
Drawing on the relatively new science of helioseismology— the study of acoustic oscillations that make the sun ring like a bell— researchers recently presented the first proof of subsurface solar winds, ranging from 45-mile-an-hour breezes to 100-mile-an-hour swirling storms. Haber and Hindman even detected a major shift of the wind in the sun's northern hemisphere, reminiscent of the El Niño weather pattern on Earth. "Our technique sees these large flows moving up, cooling, and moving back down again at all different ...
