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Solar physics

Shining a light on solar impacts

Nature Climate Change volume 1, pages 98–99 (2011)Cite this article

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Comparing changes in temperature and solar radiation on centennial timescales can help to constrain the Sun's impact on climate. New findings regarding the minimum activity level of the Sun reveal that comparisons made so far may have been too simplistic.

Light and heat from the Sun power Earth's climate system, so it is often thought that changes in solar output must be responsible for large changes in climate. This thinking neglects a key fact about the Sun; it is very large. The huge thermal capacity of the outer part of the Sun means that there are only very small changes in the temperature of — and hence in the amount of radiation emitted by — the solar surface on millennial and shorter timescales. Almost all the changes that do occur on these timescales are caused by changes in magnetic fields in or near the surface. Observations from space show that the amount of radiation emitted by the Sun has varied by only about 0.1% over recent decadal-scale solar cycles1. Now two groups — Schrijver et al.2, writing in Geophysical Research Letters, and Shapiro et al.3, writing in Astronomy and Astrophysics — have produced strikingly different estimates of the changes that occur on centennial timescales.

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Figure 1: Loops in the Sun's magnetic field.

© NASA

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  1. Mike Lockwood is at the Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, Earley Gate, PO Box 243, Reading RG6 6BB, UK and at RAL Space, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Harwell Campus, Chilton, Didcot, Oxfordshire OX11 0QX, UK,

    Mike Lockwood

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Correspondence to Mike Lockwood.

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Lockwood, M. Shining a light on solar impacts. Nature Clim Change 1, 98–99 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1096

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