It’s again time for one of those puzzling results that if they
turn out to be true, would have some very important implications
and upset a lot of relatively established science. The big issue
of course is the “if”. The case in question relates to some
results published this week in Nature by Joanna Haigh and
colleagues. They took some ‘hot off the presses’ satellite data
from the SORCE mission (which has been in operation since 2003)
and ran it through a relatively complex chemistry/radiation
model. These data are measurements of how the solar output
varies as a function of wavelength from an instrument called
“SIM” (the Spectral Irradiance Monitor). It has been known for
some time that over a solar cycle, different wavelengths vary
with different amplitudes. For instance, Lean (2000) showed that
the UV component varied by about 10 times as much as the total
solar irradiance (TSI) did over a cycle. This information (and
subsequent analyses) have lent a lot of support to the idea that
solar variability change