Solar influence on climate change
The degree to which the sun impacts climate change is hotly debated, mostly in climate change denier circles, with claims that the current warming is due to the sun. That claim, however, ignores the actual science. There have been multiple research studies published since 1998 that show that the sun has very little to do with the current global warming episode. Solanki et al. ( 2004 ), Usoskin et al. ( 2005 ), and Scafetta and West ( 2006 ) used reconstructions of solar activity to show that the sun contributed little to warming since the 1970s. Lockwood and Fröhlich ( 2007 ) showed that trends in solar output and activity since 1988 are opposite what would be required for the sun to cause global warming. Meehl et al. ( 2004 ), Ammann et al. ( 2007 ), and Huber and Knutti ( 2011 ) used climate models to show that solar output and other natural climate forces could not replicate the observed temperature trend without adding anthropogenic carbon dioxide....