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Solar physics

Sunny side of global warming

Nature volume 399, pages 416–417 (1999)Cite this article

In these times of speculation about climate change, the news that the Sun's magnetic field has doubled since 1900 — reported by Lockwood, Stamper and Wild1 on page 437of this issue — may not seem exciting. Neither are the implications immediately obvious. But it is a historical fact that our capricious climate responds to variations of the Sun's magnetic activity, with substantial warming and cooling with the rise and fall of activity over the centuries. The Sun is a complex and temperamental object, about which we know only the gross features. The magnetic fields produced by convection deep within the Sun are the basis for the complicated personality of our nearest and dearest star.

It is not yet clear what the doubling of the general field tells us about the detailed generation of solar magnetic fields, but together with the doubling of the sunspots it indicates a much more vigorous Sun, which, for reasons discussed below, is evidently brighter by around 0.1%. This seemingly innocuous brightening has occurred at the same time as a general warming of the Earth's climate and a substantial increase in atmospheric CO2. The first thought is that the burning of fossil fuels at an accelerating rate since about 1950 is responsible for the increase in CO2, whose greenhouse effect drives global warming. With fossil-fuel burning expected to rise, this line of thinking predicts a substantial desiccation of some geographical areas accompanied by melting of the polar ice caps and a rise in ocean level and flooding of vast coastal areas over the next century. The social, economic and political implications are fearful to contemplate. So it is essential to check to what extent the facts support these conclusions before embarking on drastic, perilous and perhaps misguided plans for global action.

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Figure 1: A spottier and more active Sun.

NASA

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  1. Department of Physics, University of Chicago, Chicago, 60637, Illinois, USA

    E. N. Parker

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  1. E. N. Parker
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Parker, E. Sunny side of global warming. Nature 399, 416–417 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/20816

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