Paper detail

High solar cycle spectral variations inconsistent with stratospheric ozone observations

Some of the natural variability in climate is understood to come from changes in the Sun. A key route whereby the Sun may influence surface climate is initiated in the tropical stratosphere by the absorption of solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation by ozone, leading to a modification of the temperature and wind structures and consequently to the surface through changes in wave propagation and circulation. While changes in total, spectrally-integrated, solar irradiance lead to small variations in global mean surface temperature, the `top-down' UV effect preferentially influences on regional scales at mid-to-high latitudes with, in particular, a solar signal noted in the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). The amplitude of the UV variability is fundamental in determining the magnitude of the climate response but understanding of the UV variations has been challenged recently by measurements from the SOlar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) satellite, which show UV solar cycle changes up to 10 times larger than previously thought. Indeed, climate models using these larger UV variations show a much greater response, similar to NAO observations. Here we present estimates of the ozone solar cycle response using a chemistry-climate model (CCM) in which the effects of transport are constrained by observations. Thus the photolytic response to different spectral solar irradiance (SSI) datasets can be isolated. Comparison of the results with the solar signal in ozone extracted from observational datasets yields significantly discriminable responses. According to our evaluation the SORCE UV dataset is not consistent with the observed ozone response whereas the smaller variations suggested by earlier satellite datasets, and by UV data from empirical solar models, are in closer agreement with the measured stratospheric variations. Determining the most appropriate SSI variability to apply in models...