Quiet Sun Means Cooling of Earth's Upper Atmosphere
New measurements from a NASA satellite show a dramatic cooling in the upper atmosphere that correlates with the declining phase of the current solar cycle. For the first time, researchers can show a timely link between the Sun and the climate of Earth's thermosphere, the region above 100 km, an essential step in making accurate predictions of climate change in the high atmosphere.
Though air and sea temperatures worldwide have been quite warm in 2020, the eastern and central Pacific Ocean recently grew milder with the return of La Niña, the cooler sister to El Niño. La Niña brings cool water up from the depths of the eastern tropical Pacific, a pattern that energizes easterly trade winds and pushes warm surface waters back toward Asia and Australia. With this see-sawing of the heat and moisture supply across the Pacific, global atmospheric circulation and jet streams shift.
This La Niña fits into a larger climate pattern that has been going on for nearly two decades—a cool (negative) phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). During most of the 1980s and 1990s, the Pacific was locked in a PDO warm phase, which coincided with several strong El Niño events. But since 1999, a cool phase has dominated.
The Effects of Solar Variability on Earth’s Climate, by The National Academy of Sciences
Solar irradiance, the flux of the Sun’s output directed toward Earth, is Earth’s main energy source. The Sun itself varies on several timescales—over billions of years its luminosity increases as it evolves on the main sequence toward becoming a red giant; about every 11 years its sunspot activity cycles; and within just minutes flares can erupt and release massive amounts of energy. Most of the fluctuations from tens to thousands of years are associated with changes in the solar magnetic field. The focus of the National Research Council’s September 2011 workshop on solar variability and Earth’s climate, and of this summary report, is mainly magnetically driven variability and its possible connection with Earth’s climate variations in the past 10,000 years. Even small variations in the amount or distribution of energy received at Earth can have a major influence on Earth’s climate when they persist for decades. However, no satellite measurements have indicated that solar output and variability have contributed in a significant way to the increase in global mean temperature in the past 50 years. Locally, however, correlations between solar activity and variations in average weather may stand out beyond the global trend; such has been argued to be the case for the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, even in the present day.
As a quick reply to your parting paragraph.... duuuuhhhhh hoooodathunk? Kek.
Q hivemind is in full effect here. We are unravelling the mysteries of the universe and scraping the horse shit out of the stables simultaneously. It's a Zen thing.
Further reading on this topic for you lurkers:
Quiet Sun Means Cooling of Earth's Upper Atmosphere
https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/coolingthermosphere.html
La Nina, The Cooler Sister Returns
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/147703/the-cooler-sister-returns
The Effects of Solar Variability on Earth’s Climate, by The National Academy of Sciences
https://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/nasa-sun-earth.pdf
TL;DR: When the sun goes through cycles of being warmer and and cooler, so does our planet.
Most awesome post, Anon.
As a quick reply to your parting paragraph.... duuuuhhhhh hoooodathunk? Kek.
Q hivemind is in full effect here. We are unravelling the mysteries of the universe and scraping the horse shit out of the stables simultaneously. It's a Zen thing.