Showing posts with label Solar Radiation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Solar Radiation. Show all posts

Thursday, August 26, 2010

The Sun's Role in Climate Change

Seeing that we get nearly all of our heat from the Sun, and the Sun not being a perfect object, it must have some variance.  If it has a variance, then it must affect our temperature, right?

So I found this article on wikipedia about Solar Variation, and noticed that we differ about 1 watt per square meter during the solar maximum and solar minimum.  Give the wattage is about 1366 watts/sq M, that variance is about +/- 0.07%.  Does that mean our temperature can vary by 0.07% just from the Sun alone?  How much does the solar output really contribute to global warming and cooling?