SOLCLI - Solar Influences on Climate
Investigators: Martyn Chipperfield (PI), Sandip Dhomse
Funded by: NERC
Start Date: April 2006
End Date: September 2012
Description
One of the greatest science policy issues today is to understand how human activities are altering the Earth's climate so that appropriate actions can be taken to reduce the harmful effects and to mitigate them as far as possible. In order to attribute and predict changes in climate due to human-induced activities it is essential that we have confidence in our ability to separate out changes caused by human activity from changes due to natural causes. The contribution of the Sun's variations to recent climate change, such as surface temperature increases and extreme weather events, is still very uncertain. The IPCC Third Assessment Report (2001) referred to the level of understanding of the factors determining solar radiative forcing of climate as "very low". Furthermore, there are other factors determined by solar activity that have little influence on radiative forcing but may produce particular geographical patterns of response.
SOLCLI is a NERC-funded consortium lead by Imperial College (J. Haigh). Other funded partners are Leeds , Reading , Cambridge (DAMTP), and BAS with the Hadley Centre, NCAR, MPI Hamburg and Univ. Arizona as collaborators. SOLCLI will address these uncertainties in solar-climate interactions and, through data analysis and coupled GCM studies, will lead to improved understanding of both the solar variability itself and its forcing on the atmosphere. Overall the project will study variations in solar spectral irradiance, the signal of solar variability in observations, and the impact of solar variability on both stratosphere/troposphere meteorology and chemistry.
At Leeds will will study the impact of solar variability on atmospheric chemistry using a range of 3D models. Our off-line chemical transport model (SLIMCAT) will initially be used to determine the direct impact of solar UV variations on ozone and related species. Then, the Unified Model, with the same chemistry, will be used for coupled simulations which include dynamical feedbacks. As well as investigating the impact of solar UV variations we will also study the impact of other solar-related phenomenon, e.g. precipitating electrons and solar proton events.