Advances in Atmospheric Sciences

, Volume 29, Issue 4, pp 887–908 | Cite as

Impacts of multi-scale solar activity on climate. Part II: Dominant timescales in decadal-centennial climate variability

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Abstract

Part II of this study detects the dominant decadal-centennial timescales in four SST indices up to the 2010/2011 winter and tries to relate them to the observed 11-yr and 88-yr solar activity with the sunspot number up to Solar Cycle 24. To explore plausible solar origins of the observed decadal-centennial timescales in the SSTs and climate variability in general, we design a simple one-dimensional dynamical system forced by an annual cycle modulated by a small-amplitude single- or multi-scale “solar activity.” Results suggest that nonlinear harmonic and subharmonic resonance of the system to the forcing and period-doubling bifurcations are responsible for the dominant timescales in the system, including the 60-yr timescale that dominates the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. The dominant timescales in the forced system depend on the system’s parameter setting. Scale enhancement among the dominant response timescales may result in dramatic amplifications over a few decades and extreme values of the time series on various timescales. Three possible energy sources for such amplifications and extremes are proposed. Dynamical model results suggest that solar activity may play an important yet not well recognized role in the observed decadal-centennial climate variability. The atmospheric dynamical amplifying mechanism shown in Part I and the nonlinear resonant and bifurcation mechanisms shown in Part II help us to understand the solar source of the multi-scale climate change in the 20th century and the fact that different solar influenced dominant timescales for recurrent climate extremes for a given region or a parameter setting. Part II also indicates that solar influences on climate cannot be linearly compared with non-cyclic or sporadic thermal forcings because they cannot exert their influences on climate in the same way as the sun does.

Key words

sun-climate relationship decadal-centennial climate timescales nonlinear forcing-response resonant mechanism bifurcation mechanism scale enhancement for extremes 
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Copyright information

© Chinese National Committee for International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Science Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, Institute of Atmospheric PhysicsChinese Academy of SciencesBeijingChina

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