Posted on 09/21/2005 1:11:52 PM PDT by MNJohnnie
what could be the simplest explanation for one component of global warming, a new study shows the Sun's radiation has increased by .05 percent per decade since the late 1970s.
The increase would only be significant to Earth's climate if it has been going on for a century or more, said study leader Richard Willson, a Columbia University researcher also affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
The Sun's increasing output has only been monitored with precision since satellite technology allowed necessary observations. Willson is not sure if the trend extends further back in time, but other studies suggest it does.
"This trend is important because, if sustained over many decades, it could cause significant climate change," Willson said.
In a NASA-funded study recently published in Geophysical Research Letters, Willson and his colleagues speculate on the possible history of the trend based on data collected in the pre-satellite era.
"Solar activity has apparently been going upward for a century or more," Willson told SPACE.com today.
Significant component
Further satellite observations may eventually show the trend to be short-term. But if the change has indeed persisted at the present rate through the 20th Century, "it would have provided a significant component of the global warming the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports to have occurred over the past 100 years," he said.
That does not mean industrial pollution has not been a significant factor, Willson cautioned.
Scientists, industry leaders and environmentalists have argued for years whether humans have contributed to global warming, and to what extent. The average surface temperature around the globe has risen by about 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1880. Some scientists say the increase could be part of natural climate cycles. Others argue that greenhouse gases produced by automobiles and industry are largely to blame.
Willson said the Sun's possible influence has been largely ignored because it is so difficult to quantify over long periods.
Confounding efforts to determine the Sun's role is the fact that its energy output waxes and wanes every 11 years. This solar cycle, as it is called, reached maximum in the middle of 2000 and achieved a second peak in 2002. It is now ramping down toward a solar minimum that will arrive in about three years.
Connections
Changes in the solar cycle -- and solar output -- are known to cause short-term climate change on Earth. At solar max, Earth's thin upper atmosphere can see a doubling of temperature. It swells, and denser air can puff up to the region of space where the International Space Station orbits, causing increased drag on the ship and forcing more frequent boosts from space shuttles.
Ping (to send to my tree-hugging friends)
Who knew the sun warmed the earth?
"Some gullies, on slopes of large sand dunes, might have formed when frozen carbon dioxide, trapped by windblown sand during winter, vaporized rapidly in spring, releasing gas that made the sand flow as a gully-carving fluid."
The salient point in all this, however, is that the article does confirm that Mars is indeed warming along with us.
This can mean only one thing. Karl Rove's cooked up the Weather Manipulator Mark-II. This new model has the ability to control the sun and also martian weather.
Damn, I heard the new version of the Solaris OS was good, but not that good.
John Kerry was for Kyoto before he voted against it.
No, no, no. I'm convinced global warming has been caused by my mother using aerosol hair spray back in the 70's. It's a fact. /sarcasm
Do you have more information about this? I'm a little out of the loop when it comes to Haliburton Lore.
Oh Bar-Face, You made my day asking me those questions.
Next I shall have to go to my favorite StarBucks Coffee house, drink two cups (Actually a large water and a vente coffee mixed with 5 packets of honey) and inquire more deeply. Then I shall get back to you.
Oh....that was FUNNY. I don't care who you are, that was funny.
Thank you..I try....
First of all I'm working under the assumption that all our heat comes from the sun.
If our average temperature on the planet is say, 40 degrees Farenheit. And we multiply the 40 degrees by the .05% (.0005) increase in the suns output, we come up with .02 degrees of additional heating per year. Over 100 years, that .02 degrees becomes 2 degrees.
Since we have observes an actual increase of 1 degree, I would have to assume that this increase in solar oputput is more than enough to account for ALL the temperature increase we have seen.
Now for the blame game:
The sun is the problem
George W. Bush is the son of George H.W. Bush
George W. Bush is the son
It's Bush's fault
Why per year?
1.005 times the insolation should be doing something. The planet is adjusting fairly well so far.
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