HR: 08:50h
AN: SH51E-04    [Abstracts]
TI: Interdecadal Variability of Sea-Surface Temperatures: The Case for Solar Irradiance Forcing
AU: * Reid, G C
EM: greid@al.noaa.gov
AF: CIRES, University of Colorado, c/o Aeronomy Lab, NOAA 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305 United States
AB: The record of global, hemispheric, and basin-wide sea-surface temperatures during the era of shipboard measurements provides some of the best evidence for a sun-climate linkage on interdecadal time scales. On these long time scales the upper mixed layers of the oceans can reach a quasi-equilibrium thermal balance with the external forcing, unlike the situation for interannual and even decadal-scale forcing, for which the thermal inertia of the oceans causes significant attenuation of the response. The interdecadal-scale SST data available happens to coincide roughly with the so-called Modern Minimum of solar activity, centered in the first decade of the 20th century. The data will be presented and discussed, together with some conclusions about the global climate sensitivity to solar irradiance variations.
DE: 7538 Solar irradiance
DE: 3359 Radiative processes
DE: 1600 GLOBAL CHANGE (New category)
DE: 1650 Solar variability
SC: SPA-Solar and Heliospheric Physics [SH]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting