Proceedings of an ISSI Workshop, 28 June - 2 July 1999, Bern, Switzerland

This book provides an updated overview of the processes determining the influence of solar forcing on climate. It discusses in particular the most recent developments regarding the role of aerosols in the climate system and the new insights that could be gained from the investigation of terrestrial climate analogues. The book’s structure mirrors that of the ISSI workshop held in Bern in June 2005.

On September 8-9, 2011, experts in solar physics, climate models, paleoclimatology, and atmospheric science assembled at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado for a workshop to consider the Sun's variability over time and potential Sun-climate connections. While it does not provide findings, recommendations, or consensus on the current state of the science, The Effects of Solar Variability on Earth's Climate: A Workshop Report briefly introduces the primary topics discussed by presenters at the event. As context for these topics, the summary includes background information on the potential Sun-climate connection, the measurement record from space, and potential perturbations of climate due to long-term solar variability. This workshop report also summarizes some of the science questions explored by the participants as potential future research endeavors.

Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Geophysical Monograph Series, Volume 141. This monograph presents a state-of-the-art description of the most recent results on solar variability and its possible influence on the Earth's climate and atmosphere. Our primary goal in doing so is to review solar energy flux variations (both electromagnetic and particle) and understand their relations to solar magnetic field changes and global effects, their impact on different atmospheric layers, and—as a collaboration of scientists working on solar-terrestrial physics—to note unresolved questions on an important interdisciplinary area. One of the highest-level questions facing science today is whether the Earth's atmosphere and climate system changes in a way that we can understand and predict. The Earth's climate is the result of a complex and incompletely understood system of external inputs and interacting parts. Climate change can occur on various time scales as a consequence of natural variability—including solar variability—or anthropogenic causes, or both. The Sun's variability in the form of sunspots and related magnetic activity has been the subject of careful study ever since the earliest telescopic observations. High precision photometric observations of solar-type stars clearly show that year-to-year brightness variations connected with magnetic activity are a widespread phenomenon among such stars. As our nearest star, the Sun is the only star where we can observe and identify a variety of structures and processes which lead to variations in the solar energy output, in both radiative and particle fluxes. Studying event tiny changes in solar energy flux variations may teach us about internal processes taking place in the Sun's convective zone and below.

This volume in the Long-Term Ecological Research Network Series would present the work that has been done and the understanding and database that have been developed by work on climate change done at all the LTER sites. Global climate change is a central issue facing the world, which is being worked on by a very large number of scientists across a wide range of fields. The LTER sites hold some of the best available data measuring long term impacts and changes in the environment, and the research done at these sites has not previously been made widely available to the broader climate change research community. This book should appeal reasonably widely outside the ecological community, and because it pulls together information from all 20 research sites, it should capture the interest of virtually the entire LTER research community.

V. DOMINGO Space Science Department, ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands The XIVth ESLAB Symposium on 'Physics of Solar Variations' was held in Scheveningen (The Netherlands) on 16-19 September, 1980. The objective of the symposium was to discuss from an interdisciplinary point of view the different types of changing phenomena that occur in the Sun and the effects that such changes may have on the Earth environment with the aim that a global look at the varying phenomena may improve the understanding of the underlying physical processes. Solar physicists of different background, investigators in solar radiometry and atmospheric scientists gathered to review the progress that has been made in the study of the different areas of solar variations. The proceedings of this symposium constitute an up-to-date collection of information on the variations of the Sun. The first and largest section of the proceedings is devoted to the physics of the Sun. An overview of how the observed variations contribute to the development of the theory of the solar structure is followed by several papers on recent results on the study of solar oscillations, a unique probe of Sun's interior. Several papers then summarise the theoretical and experimental efforts in the study of the solar magnetic cycle and its consequences. Finally the expansion of the corona with the formation of the solar wind and some characteristics of solar wind variations are described.