1 Climate Change: The Sun’s Role

Abstract. The sun’s role in the earth’s recent warming remains controversial even though there is a good deal of evidence to support the thesis that solar variations are a very significant factor in driving climate change both currently and in the past. This précis lays out the background and data needed to understand the basic scientific argument behind the contention that variations in solar output have a significant impact on current changes in climate. It also offers a simple, phenomenological approach for estimating the actual—as opposed to model dependent—magnitude of the sun’s influence on climate