[cogitator]

Not necessarily a contradiction, AG. The oceans are getting warmer through the water column (reference Levitus study published ~3 years ago). So the warmer surface will lead to increased evaporation regardless of the solar radiation input. In fact, if there's more evaporation, there are likely to be more clouds, and increased clouds is one suggested cause of the observed decrease in solar radiation at the surface (i.e., "global dimming").

By the way, I will reply to your comments on the Stott et al. paper this week, tomorrow or Friday.

[ancient_geezer]

In fact, if there's more evaporation, there are likely to be more clouds, and increased clouds is one suggested cause of the observed decrease in solar radiation at the surface (i.e., "global dimming").

Yep, and variation in low level cloud cover have also been shown to be substantially related to solar activity.

FIG. I. Composite figure showing changes in Earth's cloud cover from four satellite cloud data sets together with cosmic ray fluxes from Climax (solid curve, normalized to May 1965) and 10.7 cm solar Bur (dashed curve, in units of 10-22 Wm-2 Hz-2). Triangles are the Nimbus7 data, squares are the ISCCP C2 and ISCCP_D2 data, diamonds are the DMSP data. All of the displayed data have been smoothed using a 12 month running mean. The Nimbus7 is for the southern hemisphere over oceans with the tropics excluded. The DMSP data are total cloud cover for the southern hemisphere over oceans, and finally the ISCCP data have been derived from geostationary satellites over oceans with the tropics excluded. Also shown are 2-standard-deviation error bars for the three data sets, one for each 6 months.
 

and is the subject of a current research project at CERN.

Contents of CERN 2001-007
Workshop on ion-aerosol-cloud interactions

http://preprints.cern.ch/cernrep/2001/2001-007/2001-007.html

http://cloud.web.cern.ch/cloud/iaci_workshop/proceedings.html

See also:

Patterns of tropospheric response to solar variability
Hans Gleisner and Peter Thejll
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 30, NO. 13, 1711, doi:10.1029/2003GL017129, 2003
12 July 2003
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2003GL017129.shtml
http://web.dmi.dk/fsweb/solar-terrestrial/staff/thejll/GleisnerThejll2003GL017129.pdf

Climate sensitivity of the Earth to solar irradiance
Douglass, David H.; Clader, B. David
JGR 23 August 2002
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2002GL015345.shtml

Bendtsen, Jørgen; Bjerrum, Christian J.
Vulnerability of climate on Earth to sudden changes in insolation
JGR 10.1029/2002GL014829
01 August 2002
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2002GL014829.shtml

Cosmic rays and stratospheric aerosols: Evidence for a connection?
Vanhellemont, Filip; Fussen, Didier; Bingen, Christine
JGR 02 August 2002
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2002GL015567.shtml

Solar Wind Variations Related to Fluctuations of the North Atlantic Oscillation
Boberg, Fredrik; Lundstedt, Henrik
JGR 03 August 2002
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2002GL014903.shtml