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JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 96, NO. D2, PAGES 2835–2844, 1991

Solar total irradiance variations and the global sea surface temperature record

George C. Reid

Aeronomy Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder, Colorado


Abstract

The record of globally averaged sea surface temperature (SST) over the past 130 years shows a highly significant correlation with the envelope of the 11-year cycle of solar activity over the same period. This correlation could be explained by a variation in the sun’s total irradiance (the solar ‘‘constant’’) that is in phase with the solar-cycle envelope, supporting and updating an earlier conclusion by Eddy (1976) that such variations could have played a major role in climate change over the past millennium. Measurements of the total irradiance from spacecraft, rockets, and balloons over the past 25 years have provided evidence of long-term variations and have been used to develop a simple linear relationship between irradiance and the envelope of the sunspot cycle. This relationship has been used to force a one-dimensional model of the thermal structure of the ocean (Hoffert et al., 1980), consisting of a 100-m mixed layer coupled to a deep ocean and including a thermohaline circulation. The model was started in the mid-seventeenth century, at the time of the Maunder Minimum of solar activity, and mixed-layer temperatures were calculated at 6-month intervals up to the present. The total range of irradiance values during the period was about 1%, and the total range of SST was about 1 °C. Cool periods, when temperatures were about 0.5 °C below present-day values, were found in the early decades of both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There is direct evidence for the latter period from the historical SST record and some indirect evidence for the earlier cool period. While many aspects of the study are unavoidably simplistic, the results can be taken as indicating that solar variability has been an important contributor to global climate variations in recent decades. It has probably not been the only contributor, however, and in particular, the growing atmospheric burden of greenhouse gases may well have played an important role in the immediate past. This role is likely to become even more important in the near future.

Index Terms: 3309 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Climatology; 7599 Solar Physics, Astrophysics, and Astronomy: General or miscellaneous; 4572 Oceanography: Physical: Upper ocean processes; 3339 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Ocean-atmosphere interactions.

Citation: Reid, G. C. (1991), Solar total irradiance variations and the global sea surface temperature record, J. Geophys. Res., 96(D2), 2835–2844.