Description

Atmospheric circulation, the cause of weather, is driven by the sun’s energy. Climate is the integral of weather over periods of more than a year. This integral also depends on the flux of solar energy. The same applies to variations in the energy flux caused by the sun’s varying activity. Satellite data show that the “solar constant” S is variable. The solar irradiance decreased from the sunspot maximum 1979 to the minimum 1986, increased again on the way to the next maximum in the 11-year sunspot cycle, and decreased anew in the descending phase. This came as a surprise as it is plausible that the dark sunspots with their strong magnetic fields impede the free flux of energy from the sun’s interior to the outside. Yet P. V. Foukal and J. Lean [22] have shown that bright faculae in the vicinity of sunspots increase even more than sunspots when the activity grows stronger, so that an irradiance surplus is established.