final_program_abstracts[1]

11 IMSC Session Program
What influence will future solar activity have on projected
global climate changes?
Thursday - Parallel Session 6
Gareth S Jones 1 , Mike Lockwood 2 and Peter Stott 1
1 Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, UK
2 Dept Meteorology, University of Reading, Reading, UK
During the 20th century solar activity increased in magnitude to a so called "grand
maximum". Since the last solar cycle maximum in 2002, activity has decreased to
levels lower than any solar minimum since 1937. Some measures of Earth's global
near surface temperature over the same period show a decrease in the rate of
warming. Whilst this is consistent with climate model projections and knowledge of
climate internal variability there have been claims that the drop in solar activity may
be partially responsible. Indeed further claims suggest that future solar variations will
have significant impacts on climate that could partially offset projected anthropogenic
warming. Observations and reconstructions of solar activity over the last 9000 years
have been used as a constraint on possible future variations to produce probability
distributions of total solar irradiance over the next 100 years. Using this information,
with a simple climate model, we will present results of the potential implications for
future projections of climate on decadal to multi-decadal timescales.
Abstracts 265