The findings, made by Professor Terry Sloan at the University of Lancaster and Professor Sir Arnold Wolfendale at the University of Durham, find that neither changes in the activity of the Sun, nor its impact in blocking cosmic rays, can be a significant contributor to global warming.
The results have been published today, 8 November, in IOP Publishing’s journal Environmental Research Letters.
Changes in the amount of energy from the Sun reaching Earth have previously been proposed as a driver of increasing global temperatures, as has the Sun’s ability to block cosmic rays. It has been proposed that cosmic rays may have a role in cooling Earth by encouraging clouds to form, which subsequently reflect the Sun’s rays back into space.
According to this proposal, in periods of high activity the Sun blocks some of the cosmic rays from entering Earth’s atmosphere, so that fewer clouds form and Earth’s surface temperatures rise.
In an attempt to quantify the effect that solar activity — whether directly or through cosmic rays — may have had on global temperatures in the twentieth century, Sloan and Wolfendale compared data on the rate of cosmic rays entering the atmosphere, which can be used as a proxy for solar activity, with the record of global temperatures going back to 1955.
They found a small correlation between cosmic rays and global temperatures occurring every 22 years; however, the changing cosmic ray rate lagged behind the change in temperatures by between one and two years, suggesting that the cause may not be down to cosmic rays and cloud formation, but may be due to the direct effects of the Sun.
By comparing the small oscillations in cosmic ray rate, which was taken from data from two neutron monitors, and temperature with the overall trends in both since 1955, Sloan and Wolfendale found that less than 14 per cent of the global warming seen during this period could be attributable to solar activity.