R EPORTS Solar Forcing of Regional Climate Change During the Maunder Minimum

We examine the climate response to solar irradiance changes between the late 17th-century Maunder Minimum and the late 18th century. Global average temperature changes are small (about 0.3 ° to 0.4°C) in both a climate model and empirical reconstructions. However, regional temperature changes are qu...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Drew T. Shindell, Gavin A. Schmidt, Michael E. Mann, David Rind, Anne Waple
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Subjects:
Arctic
Climate change
North Atlantic
North Atlantic oscillation
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.408.654
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/shared/articles/Shindelletal01.pdf
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Summary:We examine the climate response to solar irradiance changes between the late 17th-century Maunder Minimum and the late 18th century. Global average temperature changes are small (about 0.3 ° to 0.4°C) in both a climate model and empirical reconstructions. However, regional temperature changes are quite large. In the model, these occur primarily through a forced shift toward the low index state of the Arctic Oscillation/North Atlantic Oscillation as solar irradiance decreases. This leads to colder temperatures over the Northern Hemisphere continents, especially in winter (1 ° to 2°C), in agreement with historical records and proxy data for surface temperatures. 1

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