Solar Influence on Global and Regional Climates

Abstract

The literature relevant to how solar variability influences climate is vast-but much has been based on inadequate statistics and non-robust procedures. The common pitfalls are outlined in this review. The best estimates of the solar influence on the global mean air surface temperature show relatively small effects, compared with the response to anthropogenic changes (and broadly in line with their respective radiative forcings). However, the situation is more interesting when one looks at regional and season variations around the global means. In particular, recent research indicates that winters in Eurasia may have some dependence on the Sun, with more cold winters occurring when the solar activity is low. Advances in modelling ''top-down'' mechanisms, whereby stratospheric changes influence the underlying troposphere, offer promising explanations of the observed phenomena. In contrast, the suggested modulation of low-altitude clouds by galactic cosmic rays provides an increasingly inadequate explanation of observations.

Drivers and potential predictability of summer time North Atlantic polar front jet variability

“…The question of solar cycle impact on climate has been controversial and solar signals in atmospheric variability have not been detected on a consistent basis, with much work, it has been suggested, relying on inadequate and non-robust statistics (Lockwood 2012). The importance of lagged correlations supports the analysis of Scaife et al (2013) and Gray et al (2013) although those studies focus on winter.…”

A Remarkable Recent Transition in the Solar Dynamo

“…Usoskin et al (2014), who studied solar activity over a period of three millennia, confirmed this subdivision. The reality of the recent (20th century) Grand Maximum is confirmed in critical studies by Solanki et al (2004), Lockwood et al (2009Lockwood et al ( , 2010, Lockwood (2012) and Clette et al (2014), although, after the introduction of the new system of sunspot counting (Clette et al 2014;Svalgaard and Schatten 2016), the maximum is less extreme than was thought before. Clette et al (2014) call it the 'Modern Maximum'.…”

“…We refer to papers and reviews by Russell et al (2010), Lockwood et al (2010), Lockwood (2012), Nandy et al (2011), Solanki and Krivova (2011), de Jager andDuhau (2011), de Jager (2012). Quoting Russell et al (2010): "Previous solar minima had occurred in 1996, 1986, 1976 and 1966, so Uncertainty remained at that time, as appears from a quotation by Weiss (2010): Is this just an abnormal fluctuation or are we about to experience a Maunder-like Grand Minimum?…”

Correlation of oscillatory behaviour in Matlab using wavelets

“…The correlation plot also demonstrates that there are no other sources of significant correlation on any other timescales. For reference, a correlation image showing perfect correlations across all scales is presented in Fig 2. Probability values for observed correlations can be easily estimated using in-built Matlab s algorithms e.g., see Kendall (1970), Best and Roberts (1975), Ramsey (1989), and references therein for additional information.…”

“…These phenomena can change significantly in strength and period as a function of time and are an integral part of climate variability (e.g. Hurrell et al, 2003;Lockwood, 2012;Philander, 1990). Oscillations are also present over much shorter timescales of seconds to hours, for example within geochemical datasets concerning volcanic degassing (Tamburello et al, 2012).…”