HAL will be down for maintenance from Friday, June 10 at 4pm through Monday, June 13 at 9am. More information
Skip to Main content Skip to Navigation
Journal articles

Evidence for solar forcing in variability of temperatures and pressures in Europe

Jean-Louis Le Mouël 1 Elena Blanter 1 Mikhail Shnirman 1 Vincent Courtillot 1
1 IPGP - Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris
Abstract : Daily temperature and pressure series from 55 European meteorological stations covering the 20th century are analyzed. The overall temperature mean displays a sharp minimum near 1940 and a step-like jump near 1987. We evaluate the evolution of disturbances of these series using mean squared inter-annual variations and "lifetimes". The decadal to secular evolutions of solar activity and temperature disturbances display similar signatures over the 20th century. Because of heterogeneity of the climate system response to solar forcing, regional and seasonal approaches are key to successful identification of these signatures. Most of the solar response is governed by the winter months, as best seen near the Atlantic Ocean. Intensities of disturbances vary by factors in excess of 2, underlining a role for the Sun as a significant forcing factor of European atmospheric variations. We speculate about the possible origin of these solar signatures. The last figure of the paper exemplifies its main results.
Keywords : Temperature variability Solar activity European climate Lifetime Winter months
Document type :
Journal articles
Complete list of metadata
https://hal-insu.archives-ouvertes.fr/insu-03604895
Contributor : Nathalie Pothier Connect in order to contact the contributor
Submitted on : Thursday, March 10, 2022 - 4:39:54 PM
Last modification on : Saturday, March 12, 2022 - 3:32:30 AM

Identifiers

Collections

INSU | AFRIQ | IPGP | UPMC | UNIV-PARIS7 | CNRS | UNIV-PARIS | SORBONNE-UNIVERSITE

Citation

Jean-Louis Le Mouël, Elena Blanter, Mikhail Shnirman, Vincent Courtillot. Evidence for solar forcing in variability of temperatures and pressures in Europe. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, 2009, 71, pp.1309-1321. ⟨10.1016/j.jastp.2009.05.006⟩. ⟨insu-03604895⟩

Export

BibTeX TEI DC DCterms EndNote Datacite

Share

Metrics

Record views

2