Solar rhythm: The Sun's corona as imaged by NASA and the ESA's SOHO space observatory.
Credit: SOHO/NASA
PARIS: A solar radiation study is evidence that global warming over the past two decades cannot be blamed on the Sun, a theory espoused by climate-change sceptics.
British and Swiss researchers looked at data for radiation from the Sun, levels of which can cool or warm our planet's atmosphere. They factored in a cycle of solar radiation, which goes through peaks and troughs of activity over a period of about 11 years.
Writing in the British journal, the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, the team said that the Sun had been less active since 1985, even though global temperatures have continued to rise.
The study also puts to bed an idea that a decrease in the activity of the Sun's magnetic field – affecting the amount of galactic cosmic rays that reach Earth – could have recently altered weather patterns, causing warming.
Overwhelming consensus
"Over the past 20 years, all the trends in the Sun that could have had an influence on the Earth's climate have been in the opposite direction to that required to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures," said the scientists.
The study is co-authored by physicists Mike Lockwood of Britain's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Claus Froehlich of the World Radiation Centre in Switzerland, who analysed over 100 years of solar data.
The overwhelming consensus among scientists is that human activity is to blame for the rise in global temperatures.
In its latest report, issued this year, the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that this warming is already affecting the climate system. Since 1900, the mean global atmospheric temperature has risen by 0.8degC, and the sea level by 10 to 20 cm.
Levels of carbon dioxide, have risen by around a third since the Industrial Revolution and are now at their highest in 650,000 years. Eleven of the past 12 years rank among the dozen warmest years on record.
In the past few years, glaciers and snow and ice cover have fallen back sharply in alpine regions, the edges of the Greenland ice sheet and on the Antarctic peninsula have shrunk, Arctic summer sea ice has thinned and retreated and Siberian and Canadian permafrost have shown signs of thaw and fallback.
What?
Your comment is completely baseless and ignorant. We know from our observations that the sun has cycles that can last as little as 12 years.
We know that we are due for the next cycle, which should usher in global cooling from approximately 2012.
Governments are aware of this too, and are desperate to impose their draconian laws and tariffs now, so that when the natural cooling happens they can take credit (as stupid as it would look to any serious scientist who isn't in the pay of the IPCC).
We are heading now toward a one-world government, and climate change is their method of getting us all to comply. IMO.
I don't see any 'balance'.
There is nowhere near a 'consensus' among scientists that mankind is the cause of climate change. Minimal research will lead you to countless articles by very well respected scientists who offer alternative views.
But I never see the so-called 'balanced' reporting that this IPCC scientist complains about. When was the last time you heard the views of a climate change sceptic scientist on your national news program?
Thanks to Canadian scientist Steve McIntyre, we now know that the hottest year on record is 1934. In fact, now NASA's official figures state that 4 of the hottest years were in the 1930s, while 3 were in the last 10 years. To state that '11 of the past 12 years rank among the warmest on record' is not just misleading, it's vacuous. 'Rank among the warmest'? Come on! What a flimsy statement.
But most importantly of all:
If the sun has no influence on the warming we've seen in the last century, then how does one explain parallel global warming on other planets? NASA's own figures state a rise in temperature on Mars (for example) of 0.5 degrees C since the 1970s. It's scary how this fact is taboo within governments, and therefore within the IPCC too.
Proponents of AGW theory obviously say this is a complete coincidence. I wouldn't be so sure.
Sun Clear Over Global Warming
The piece of 12 July 2007 is amazingly false. I have no idea how one could scientifically study the sun's activities and then state the Sun is clear or in essence has no impact what so ever. My work shows very, very, very clearly this is NOT so. So much for their science...must be from the "world is flat" society....Phil
BULL HOCKEY
These supposed geniuses are overlooking one ginoromous fact!! Two actually!!!
The sun's output could have remained completely stable for the last thousand years; but, the single greatest force which allows it's radiation to penetrate the atmosphere is the earth's magnetic field! Which, as other scientists have been telling us for quite a long time, is about to switch poles some time in the near future (geoplanetarally speaking)! Apparently, the earth's magnetic field has declined in strength approximately 10% in the last 100 years in preparation for this pole switch. And, guess what? The earth's temperature has risen less than 1 degree Fahrenheit in the last 100 years as a result! No 'if's', 'ands', or 'buts' about it, and anyone who doesn't believe this is so stupid as to be compared to a Flat Earther! (If Al Gore can say it, I can too!!!
Secondly, the entire industrial age of man, has not produced as much particulate, and green house gases as one single volcano! And, there have been an average of 500 volcanic eruptions PER YEAR, for as long as recorded history!
PROVE ME WRONG, YOU LOOK UP THE NUMBERS YOURSELF!