Knud Lassen

Variability of the solar cycle length during the past five centuries and the apparent association with terrestrial climate

Abstract Solar data have been used as parameters in a great number of studies concerning variations of the physical conditions in the Earths upper atmosphere. The varying solar activity is distinctly represented by the 11-yr cycle in the number of sunspots. The length of this sunspot period is not fixed. Actually, it varies with a period of 80–90 yr. Recently, this variation has been found to be strongly correlated with long-term variations in the global temperature. Information about northernhemisphere temperature based on proxy data is available back to the second half of the sixteenth century. Systematic monitoring of solar data did not take place prior to 1750. Therefore, a critical assessment of existing and proxy solar data prior to 1750 is reported and tables of epochs of sunspot minima as well as sunspot cycle lengths covering the interval 1500–1990 are presented. The tabulated cycle lengths are compared with reconstructed and instrumental temperature series through four centuries. The correlation between solar activity and northern hemisphere land surface temperature is confirmed.

Solar forcing of the Northern hemisphere land air temperature: New data

Abstract It has previously been demonstrated that the mean land air temperature of the Northern hemisphere could adequately be associated with a long-term variation of solar activity as given by the length of the approximately 11-year solar cycle. Adding new temperature data for the 1990s and expected values for the next sunspot extrema we test whether the solar cycle length model is still adequate. We find that the residuals are now inconsistent with the pure solar model. We conclude that since around 1990 the type of Solar forcing that is described by the solar cycle length model no longer dominates the long-term variation of the Northern hemisphere land air temperature.

The cause‐and‐effect relationship of solar cycle length and the Northern Hemisphere air surface temperature

It has previously been demonstrated that the mean land air temperature of the Northern Hemisphere could adequately be associated with a long-term variation of solar activity as given by the length of the approximately 11-year solar cycle. In this paper it is shown that the right cause-and-effect ordering, in the sense of Granger causality, is present between the smoothed solar cycle length and the cycle mean of Northern Hemisphere land air temperature for the twentieth century, at the 99% significance level. This indicates the existence of a physical mechanism linking solar activity to climate variations.

Solar Activity and Global Temperature

A major problem in the determination of the magnitude of a possible solar effect on climate is that no physical parameter of solar energy output exists that has been observed long enough to be used for long-term analyses. Therefore, a number of indirect parameters have been proposed, with the sunspot number as the most commonly used parameter. Recently it has been suggested that climatic effects may be more directly associated with the length of the solar cycle. Whereas the magnitude of the sunspot number is only believed to be reliable back to 1750, determination of solar activity minima may be based on other types of data. A recent reconstructed series of solar cycle lengths back to 1500 gives new information about solar activity in particular before and during the Maunder Minimum. A comparison with reconstructed temperature records has revealed that the good agreement between the solar cycle length and the global temperature found for the modern instrumental temperature record is also characteristic for the total series of reconstructed temperature data. A further result is that the response of the temperature during the pre-instrumental era is the same as for the modern temperature record. This finding confirms the close association beween terrestrial temperature and solar activity measured in terms of the solar cycle length.