Some recent studies of probable connections between solar and atmospheric variability

Abstract

The paper briefly reviews some recent investigations of possible low-frequency effects of solar variations on the earth's surface temperature and on the occurrence of El Ninos along the coast of Peru. It draws attention to the stable, strong correlations between the height of constant pressure levels in the stratosphere and the sunsport cycles, and to a theory that attributes the observed decadal oscillation in the lower stratosphere to interaction between UV radiation and ozone in the upper stratosphere, with the dynamic effect of this radiative interaction reaching into the lower stratosphere and upper troposphere. We not, too, that the satellite measurements, which began in 1979, show a change in total solar irradiance that is in-phase with the sunspot cycle; and also a change in the earth's surface temperature, determined through the outgoing long-wave radiation, which parallels the sunspot cycle. The temperature change was at least five times larger thant predicted by theory for the size of the observed irradiance change