The Sun’s Impact on Climate Change
Image above: A photograph of the sun taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Laboratory showing sunspots many times larger than Earth from October 23, 2014, with the Earth added to scale by size. Distance is not to scale.
View this page as a printable (PDF) here: CAAG The Sun’s Impact on Climate Change
Key Takeaways:
Scientific measurements show the Sun’s heat and energy output varies over time.
Changes in the Sun’s heat and energy output have long been the most important factor driving climate change on Earth.
A substantial increase in solar output during the 20th century likely explains much, and perhaps most, of recent warming.
Short Summary:
The Sun’s heat and energy output varies over time rather than being constant or steady.1 Scientists have been able to reconstruct the Sun’s heat output going back hundreds of years. The data show changes in global temperatures have almost perfectly mirrored variations in the Sun’s heat output throughout the past several hundred years, including during our current period of modest warming.
In Figure 1 below, scientists reconstructed changes in the Sun’s energy output going back to 1600 A.D. The data, published in the peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters, show the Sun’s energy output bottomed out in the 1600s, experienced a steep increase during the 1700s, plateaued in the 1800s, and then experienced another sharp increase during the 1900s.2
https://climateataglance.com/the-suns-impact-on-climate-change/
