GHGs, Not Solar Activity Powering Warming - Max Planck Institute

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KATLENBURG-LINDAU, Germany, August 3, 2004 (ENS) - "Solar activity affects the climate but plays only a minor role in the current global warming, a German-Finnish team of scientists has found. Since the middle of the last century, the Sun has been in a phase of unusually high activity, shown by frequent occurrences of sunspots, gas eruptions, and radiation storms.

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But Professor Sami Solanki, solar physicist and director at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, is not convinced that the increased activity of the Sun is responsible for global warming. He says that based on his team's research, the Sun can be responsible for, at most, only a small part of the warming over the last 20 to 30 years. "Just how large this role is, must still be investigated," he says, "since, according to our latest knowledge on the variations of the solar magnetic field, the significant increase in the Earth’s temperature since 1980 is indeed to be ascribed to the greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide."

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They came to the conclusion that the variations on the Sun run parallel to climate changes for most of that time, indicating that the Sun has indeed influenced the climate in the past. Just how large this influence is, is subject to further investigation.

However, they said, "since about 1980, while the total solar radiation, its ultraviolet component, and the cosmic ray intensity all exhibit the 11-year solar periodicity, there has otherwise been no significant increase in their values. In contrast, the Earth has warmed up considerably within this time period. This means that the Sun is not the cause of the present global warming."

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http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2004/2004-08-03-03.asp