Solar surprise for climate issue
Baku, October 7 (AZERTAC).The Sun`s influence on modern-day global warming may have been overestimated, a study suggests.
Scientists found unexpected patterns in solar output in the years 2004-2007, which challenge existing models.
However, they caution that three years of data are not enough to draw firm conclusions about long-term trends.
Writing in the journal Nature, they say it may become necessary to revise the way that solar influences are dealt with in computer models of the climate.
But, they add, the research does not challenge the role of humanity`s production of greenhouse gases as the dominant long-term driver of modern-day climate change.
"What we can`t really do at this stage is to extrapolate from this three-year period to any longer period - we can`t even say that [what we`ve seen] has happened on previous solar cycles," said principal researcher Joanna Haigh from Imperial College London.
"If you could extrapolate... the climate models have been over-estimating the Sun`s effect on temperature [rise]."
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that humanity`s emissions over the 20th Century were about 10 times more important as a driver of temperature rise then the slow upward trend in average solar output.
This new study does not change that basic picture, Professor Haigh said, despite the claims of some observers that solar factors have been underestimated as a cause of modern-day climate change.
"If the climate were affected in the long term, the Sun should have produced a notable cooling in the first half of the 20th Century, which we know it didn`t," she said.
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