Possible impacts of a descent into a Grand Solar Minimum on extratropical regional surface climate
Abstract
The Sun's output varies on a number of characteristic timescales, the most well-known of which is the approximately 11-year solar cycle. It has been shown that the Sun also exhibits cycles with a period of ~200 years, so-called Grand Solar Cycles. Reconstructions indicate that levels of solar activity have been relatively high for the past ~70 years, and it has been suggested that the Sun might be expected to evolve towards a state of lower output; however, the timescale and extent of such a 'Grand Solar Minimum' event is highly uncertain. This study presents sensitivity experiments with a state-of-the-art climate model to investigate the impact of reaching very low levels of solar output, similar to those thought to have occurred during the Maunder Minimum, by the middle of the 21st century. We investigate the effect of uncertainties in spectral solar irradiance by using both the semi-empirical model of Lean et al., which gives a relatively modest change in the ultraviolet (UV) spectral region and is commonly used to represent solar variability in climate models, as well as the recent measurements from the SORCE satellite, which suggest a much larger change in the UV across the solar cycle for the period 2004-07. Under the assumption of there being a large change in the UV derived from a linear extrapolation of the SORCE data, it is shown that a period of very low solar activity would be associated with a more negative North Atlantic Oscillation index. This signature in the large-scale circulation is associated with changes in regional surface climate, including cooler temperatures across the UK and western Europe. In the experiment which assumes a smaller change in UV irradiance, the extratropical circulation responses in the stratosphere and troposphere are found to be of a consistent sign but smaller in magnitude. This highlights the importance of one possible mechanism for solar-climate interactions, namely the impact of tropical upper stratospheric heating on extratropical stratospheric winds and the annular modes. As expected, changes in global-mean surface temperature are small in both sets of experiments, meaning that such a change in solar activity would have little effect on any greenhouse gas induced global warming.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012AGUFM.A11J0180M
- Keywords:
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- 1650 GLOBAL CHANGE / Solar variability;
- 3362 ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES / Stratosphere/troposphere interactions;
- 3363 ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES / Stratospheric dynamics