Solar forcing of climate during the last millennium recorded in lake sediments from northern Sweden

We report on a sediment record from a small lake within the subarctic wetland complex Stordalen in northernmost Sweden covering the last 1000 years. Variations in the content of minerogenic material are found to follow reconstructed variations in the activity of the Sun between the 13th and 18th cen...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Holocene
Main Authors: Kokfelt, Ulla, Muscheler, Raimund
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: SAGE Publications 2013
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Online Access:https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/3761000
https://doi.org/10.1177/0959683612460781
Description
Summary:We report on a sediment record from a small lake within the subarctic wetland complex Stordalen in northernmost Sweden covering the last 1000 years. Variations in the content of minerogenic material are found to follow reconstructed variations in the activity of the Sun between the 13th and 18th centuries. Periods of low solar activity are associated with minima in minerogenic material and vice versa. A comparison between the sunspot cycle and a long instrumental series of summer precipitation further reveals a link between the 11 yr solar cycle and summer precipitation variability since around 1960. Solar minima are in this period associated with minima in summer precipitation, whereas the amount of summer precipitation increases during periods with higher solar activity. Our results suggest that the climate responds to both the 11 yr solar cycle and to long-term changes in solar activity and in particular solar minima, causing dry conditions with resulting decreased runoff.