Solar Variability and Climate Change

One of the most exciting and important challenges in science today is to understand climate variability and to make reliable predictions. The Earth's climate is a complex system driven by external and internal forces. Climate can vary over a large range of time scales as a consequence of natural variability or anthropogenic influence, or both. Observations of steadily increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases --primarily man-made-- in the Earth's atmosphere have led to an expectation of global warming during the coming decades. However, the greenhouse effect competes with other climate forcing mechanisms, such as solar variability, cosmic ray flux changes, desertification, deforestation, and changes in natural and man-made atmospheric aerosols. Indeed, the climate is always changing, and has forever been so, including periods before the industrial era began. Since the dominant driving force of the climate system is the Sun, the accurate knowledge of the solar radiation received by Earth at various wavelengths and from energetic particles with varying intensities, as well as a better knowledge of the solar-terrestrial interactions and their temporal and spatial variability are crucial to quantify the solar influence on climate and to distinguish between natural and anthropogenic influences. In this paper we give an overview on the recent results of solar irradiance measurements over the last three decades and the possible effects of solar variability on climate.