The Sun's Role in Climate
41566365
The Sun's Role in Climate Variations
Is the Sun the controller of climate changes, only the instigator of changes that are mostly forced by the system feedbacks, or simply a convenient scapegoat for climate variations lacking any other obvious cause? This question is addressed for suggested solar forcing mechanisms operating on time scales from billions of years to decades. Each mechanism fails to generate the expected climate response in important respects, although some relations are found. The magnitude of the system feedbacks or variability appears as large or larger than that of the solar forcing, making the Sun's true role ambiguous. As the Sun provides an explicit external forcing, a better understanding of its cause and effect in climate change could help us evaluate the importance of other climate forcings (such as past and future greenhouse gas changes)
Science
David H Rind
131802963
The Sun's Role in Climate
Abstract Millennial scale climate variability is a globally well established Holocene phenomenon described for all oceans and continents. Cycles are known from upper, middle, and lower latitudes, encompassing all climate zones from the Arctic to the tropics. The amplitude of the observed temperature fluctuations is often more than 1degC and thus has a similar or even greater range than the warming that has occurred since the Little Ice Age. Furthermore, many of these Holocene, natural climate fluctuations show the same level of abruptness as the 20th century warming. A common characteristic of many of the documented millennial climate fluctuations is their good match with solar activity changes, as well as a North Atlantic climate record by Bond et al. (2001) Besides solar activity changes, internal millennial ocean cycles may have contributed to the observed climate oscillations. Both solar and internal climate system autocyclical drivers are not yet fully implemented in the current climate models, which still do not manage to reproduce the variable Holocene climate development. Yet successful hindcast capability is generally considered a prerequisite that qualifies models to be used for modeling of future climate. This chapter reviews Holocene millennial scale climate fluctuations as reported in 64 papers worldwide. Future research needs to attempt a detailed correlation of the existing Holocene climate curves, complemented by additional data sets filling gaps in currently poorly documented regions. A good understanding of global Holocene millennial and centennial scale climate variability and its possible solar forcing is required as a calibration basis for a new generation of climate models that should have the objective to reliably reproduce past climate change before attempting detailed future simulations.
Sebastian Luning Fritz Vahrenholt
106395597
The Sun's Role in Climate Change
Henrik Svensmark
210343862
Variations on Sun's role in climate change
Roger W Cohen
210613185
Variations on Sun's role in climate change
Diedrich Schmidt
15110171
Variations on Sun's role in climate change
Wim Klaassen
210272740
Variations on Sun's role in climate change
Jay Gulledge
210266450
Variations on Sun's role in climate change
Anthony D Socci
210243526
Variations on Sun's role in climate change
Nicola Scafetta Bruce J West
210262243
Variations on Sun's role in climate change
W H Smith James Reuel Smith