We know that solar radiation is quite a determining factor in the face of climate change, since it is the greenhouse gases that retain the solar radiation that returns the surface of the Earth to the atmosphere and with it its heat.
However, until now it had not been discovered that Solar activity modifies the amount of radiation that the Earth receives and thus creates fluctuations and impacts on the Earth's climate. What is happening in the Sun to affect us?
Solar activity
A group of Swiss researchers have been investigating what impacts solar activity can have on Earth's climate. As a result, they have been able to estimate for the first time the influence of the king star on the global warming of planet Earth. It was previously known that oscillations in the Sun's activity could modify the amount of solar radiation that reaches the Earth. What was difficult, meaningful and challenging, It is to be able to know whether or not these variations in incident solar radiation exerted a measurable influence on the Earth's climate.
The hypothesis from which the scientists who have studied this phenomenon started was based on the fact that the rays of the Sun that it cast on the planet cause more important variations than we believed. In this way an attempt is made to explain natural climate changes that have occurred in the last millennia on our planet (something that has nothing to do with current climate change, which is totally caused by human activity after the industrial revolution).
The Sun affects the Earth's climate
The research work has been prepared by experts from the Davos Psychomereological Observatory, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag), the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and the University of Bern. In order to reach fairly solid conclusions, they have been based on numerical computer analysis to be able to estimate the influence of the Sun on the temperature of the Earth during the next 100 years.
In the investigation they found out that there was a phase in which the Sun had a great intensity in its activities in 1950. However, this solar activity will soon decrease. The study predicts that a weaker radiation of the star can contribute to a total drop in Earth's temperature of half a degree.
When reading this paragraph you have surely thought that all the problems of global warming will disappear when the Sun gives us less radiation and less heat. But this is not so. This effect of reducing solar activity will not compensate for human-induced global warming, which has caused an increase of almost more than one degree centigrade in global temperature compared to the figures recorded in the pre-industrial era.
You can help in the fight against climate change
The experts who have worked on the research, including the director of the Davos Psychomereological Observatory and project manager, Werner Schmutz, has pointed out that the discovery of this decrease in solar activity it is “important” and can help address the consequences of climate change.
If the amount of solar radiation we receive decreases, it will save us a little time to slow down global warming. However, even if the solar radiation we receive decreases, at the current rate of global warming, not even that will work. He has also pointed out that we should not calm down on this issue, since after a minimum in solar activity, there comes a maximum. Logically, if there is a maximum in solar radiation and we continue to increase the concentration of greenhouse gases, it will be our total self-destruction.
Finally, scientists recall that It is quite difficult to be able to predict exactly how the activity of our star will affect the Earth's climate. This is due to the impossibility of being able to access all the data on solar activity in the last millions of years or to have records of the temperature of our planet.