Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Small influence of solar variability on climate over the past millennium

Nature Geoscience volume 7, pages 104–108 (2014)Cite this article

Subjects

An Addendum to this article was published on 03 February 2015

This article has been updated

Abstract

The climate of the past millennium was marked by substantial decadal and centennial scale variability in the Northern Hemisphere1. Low solar activity has been linked to cooling during the Little Ice Age (AD 1450–1850; ref. 1) and there may have been solar forcing of regional warmth during the Medieval Climate Anomaly2,3,4,5 (AD 950–1250; ref. 1). The amplitude of the associated changes is, however, poorly constrained5,6, with estimates of solar forcing spanning almost an order of magnitude7,8,9. Numerical simulations tentatively indicate that a small amplitude best agrees with available temperature reconstructions10,11,12,13. Here we compare the climatic fingerprints of high and low solar forcing derived from model simulations with an ensemble of surface air temperature reconstructions14 for the past millennium. Our methodology15 also accounts for internal climate variability and other external drivers such as volcanic eruptions, as well as uncertainties in the proxy reconstructions and model output. We find that neither a high magnitude of solar forcing nor a strong climate effect of that forcing agree with the temperature reconstructions. We instead conclude that solar forcing probably had a minor effect on Northern Hemisphere climate over the past 1,000 years, while, volcanic eruptions and changes in greenhouse gas concentrations seem to be the most important influence over this period.

Your institute does not have access to this article

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Figure 1: Simulations and temperature reconstructions.
Figure 2: Estimated response to forcings.

Change history

  • 07 January 2014

    In the version of this Letter originally published, 'seventh and early ninth century' in the second paragraph should have read 'seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries'. Additionally, there were errors in Fig. 1. These errors have now been corrected in all versions of the Letter.

References

  1. Masson-Delmotte, V. et al. in IPCC Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Stocker, T. F. D. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, in the press).

  2. Eddy, J. A. Maunder minimum. Science 192, 1189–1202 (1976).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Swingedouw, D. et al. Natural forcing of climate during the last millennium: Fingerprint of solar variability. Clim. Dynam. 36, 1349–1364 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Van Hateren, J. H. A fractal climate response function can simulate global average temperature trends of the modern era and the past millennium. Clim. Dynam. 40, 2651–2670 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Gray, L. J. et al. Solar influences on climate. Rev. Geophys. 48, RG4001 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Schmidt, G. A. et al. Climate forcing reconstructions for use in PMIP simulations of the last millennium (v1.1). Geosci. Model Dev. 5, 185–191 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Shapiro, A. I. et al. A new approach to the long-term reconstruction of the solar irradiance leads to large historical solar forcing. Astron. Astrophys. 529, A67 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Steinhilber, F., Beer, J. & Fröhlich, C. Total solar irradiance during the Holocene. Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, L19704 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Wang, Y-M., Lean, J. L. & Sheeley, N. R. Modeling the Sun’s magnetic field and irradiance since 1713. Astrophys. J. 625, 522–538 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Ammann, C. et al. Solar influence on climate during the past millennium: Results from transient simulations with the NCAR Climate System Model. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 104, 3713–3718 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Jungclaus, J. H. et al. Climate and carbon-cycle variability over the last Millennium. Clim. Past Discuss. 6, 1009–1044 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Feulner, G. Are the most recent estimates for Maunder Minimum solar irradiance in agreement with temperature reconstructions? Geophys. Res. Lett. 38, L16706 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Hind, A. & Moberg, A. Past millennial solar forcing magnitude. Clim. Dynam. 41, 2527–2537 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Frank, D. C. et al. Ensemble reconstruction constraints on the global carbon cycle sensitivity to climate. Nature 463, 527–530 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Allen, M. R. & Stott, P. A. Estimating signal amplitudes in optimal fingerprinting, Part I: Theory. Clim. Dynam. 21, 477–491 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Stott, P. A., Jones, G. S. & Mitchell, J. F. B. Do models underestimate the solar contribution to recent climate change? J. Clim. 16, 4079–4093 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Benestad, R. E. & Schmidt, G. A. Solar trends and global warming. J. Geophys. Res. 114 (2009).

  18. Hegerl, G. C. et al. Detection of human influence on a new 1500 yr climate reconstruction. J. Clim. 20, 650–666 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Hegerl, G. et al. Influence of human and natural forcing on European seasonal temperatures. Nature Geosci. 4, 99–103 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Gordon, C. et al. The simulation of SST, sea ice extents and ocean heat transports in a version of the Hadley Centre coupled model without flux adjustments. Clim. Dynam. 16, 147–168 (2000).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Tett, S. F. B. et al. The impact of natural and anthropogenic forcings on climate and hydrology since 1550. Clim. Dynam. 28, 3–34 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Crowley, T. J. et al. Volcanism and the little ice age. PAGES News 16, 22–23 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Pongratz, J., Reick, C., Raddatz, T. & Claussen, M. A reconstruction of global agricultural areas and land cover for the last millennium. Glob. Biogeochem. Cycles 22, GB3018 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Morice, C. P., Kennedy, J. J., Rayner, N. A. & Jones, P. D. Quantifying uncertainties in global and regional temperature change using an ensemble of observational estimates: The HadCRUT4 data set. J. Geophys. Res. 117, D0810 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Schurer, A. P., Hegerl, G. C., Mann, M. E., Tett, S. F. B. & Phipps, S. J. Separating forced from chaotic climate variability over the past millennium. J. Clim. 26, 6954–6973 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Timmreck, C. et al. Limited temperature response to the very large AD 1258 volcanic eruption. Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, L21708 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Mann, M. E., Fuentes, J. D. & Rutherford, S. Underestimation of volcanic cooling in tree-ring-based reconstructions of hemispheric temperatures. Nature Geosci. 5, 202–205 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Anchukaitis, K. et al. Tree rings and volcanic cooling. Nature Geosci. 5, 836–837 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Woollings, T., Lockwood, M., Masato, G., Bell, C. & Gray, L. Enhanced signature of solar variability in Eurasian winter climate. Geophys. Res. Lett. 37, L20805 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Shindell, D. T., Faluvegi, G., Miller, R. L., Schmidt, G. A., Hansen, J. E. & Sun, S. Solar and anthropogenic forcing of tropical hydrology. Geophys. Res. Lett. 33, L24706 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by NERC grant NE/G019819/1. We acknowledge CMIP5 and PMIP3 and we thank the climate modelling groups (listed in Supplementary Section 5) for producing and making available their model output, G. Jones for making a long HadCM3 control simulation available for our use, D. Frank for making his reconstructions available, for providing code to carry out the cubic spine smoothing and for several helpful comments and M. Williams, J. Pongratz and T. Crowley for advice in forcing implementation.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3JW, UK

    Andrew P. Schurer, Simon F. B. Tett & Gabriele C. Hegerl

Authors
  1. Andrew P. Schurer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Simon F. B. Tett
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Gabriele C. Hegerl
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

A.P.S. and S.F.B.T. set up and carried out the simulations. A.P.S. and G.C.H. carried out the fingerprinting analysis. All contributed to the writing and the design of modelling and analysis strategy.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrew P. Schurer.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Information (PDF 2713 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Schurer, A., Tett, S. & Hegerl, G. Small influence of solar variability on climate over the past millennium. Nature Geosci 7, 104–108 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2040

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2040

Further reading

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing