Solar Cycle and El Nino: New research points to stronger connection

New research led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado shows that maximum solar activity and solar fluctuations through the complete solar cycle have impacts on Earth that mimic La Nina and El Nino events in the Pacific Ocean. This research may set the stage for more accurate predictions of weather patterns at various times during the Solar Cycle, which lasts approximately 11 years.

The total solar output reaching Earth has a very small range which only changes by 0.1 percent from max to min within the solar cycle. Researchers have searched for decades to link these variations to natural weather and climate variations.
NCAR researchers used computer models of global climate and more than a century of ocean temperature data to answer questions about the correlation between solar activity and global climate. While change in greenhouse gases was also included in the model, but the main point of the study is to examine the role of solar variability in climate change.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and by the Department of Energy.

“We have fleshed out the effects of a new mechanism to understand what happens in the tropical Pacific when there is a maximum of solar activity,” says NCAR scientist Gerald Meehl, the lead author. “When the Sun’s output peaks, it has far-ranging and often subtle impacts on tropical precipitation and on weather systems around much of the world.”

Examiner