Scientists Report Evidence For Sun-Climate Link

[zavvy]

<b>Scientists Report Evidence For Sun-Climate Link</b><br /><br />LINK<br /><br />A team led by University of Maine scientists has reported finding a potential link between changes in solar activity and the Earth's climate. In a paper due to be published in an upcoming volume of the Annals of Glaciology, Paul Mayewski, director of UMaine's Climate Change Institute, and 11 colleagues from China, Australia and UMaine describe evidence from ice cores pointing to an association between the waxing and waning of zonal wind strength around Antarctica and a chemical signal of changes in the sun's output.<br /><br />At the heart of the paper, Solar Forcing of the Polar Atmosphere, are calcium, nitrate and sodium data from ice cores collected in four Antarctic locations and comparisons of those data to South Pole ice core isotope data for beryllium-10, an indicator of solar activity. The authors also point to data from Greenland and the Canadian Yukon that suggest similar relationships between solar activity and the atmosphere in the northern hemisphere. They focus on years since 1400 when the Earth entered a roughly 500-year period known as the Little Ice Age. <br /><br />The researchers' goal is to understand what drives the Earth's climate system without taking increases in greenhouse gases into account, says Mayewski. "There are good reasons to be concerned about greenhouse gases, but we should be looking at the climate system with our eyes open," he adds. Understanding how the system operates in the absence of human impacts is important for responding to climate changes that might occur in the future.<br /><br />Mayewski founded the International Transantarctic Scientific Expedition (ITASE) and is the co-author of The Ice Chronicles: The Quest to Understand Global Climate Change, published in 2002 with Frank White. The United States' ITASE office is located at UMaine. Antarctic locations u

 

[CalliArcale]

Fascinating!<br /><br />The Sun has such an amazingly profound impact on terrestrial life. It makes the fabled "Goldilocks Zone" feel all the more incredible, really, because what seem to be negligible shifts clearly become extremely significant over time.<br /><br />If we want to keep our environment stabilized, understanding the sun's influence is of paramount importance, because although we have no control over it, if we understand it then perhaps we can react to it. Maybe it even affects how significant human impact is; that is to say, perhaps periods of intense solar activity are times when we need to be especially careful about greenhouse gas emissions, because the margin within which the earth can cope is much smaller. So even the Kyoto proponents should be interested in this data.<br /><br />Thanks for sharing! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>