Diagnostics of a cause-effect relation between solar activity and the Earth’s global surface temperature

The influence of solar activity on the Earth’s global surface temperature (GST) was quantified. The method for estimation of the Granger causality was used, with analysis of the improvement of the prediction of one process by using data from another process as compared to autoprediction. Two versions of reconstructions of the solar flux variations associated with solar activity were used, according to Hoyt et al. [1997] for 1680–1992 (data H) and according to Lean et al. [2005] for 1610–2005 (data L). In general, the estimation results for the two reconstructions are reasonably well consistent. A significant influence of solar activity on GST with a positive sign was found for two periods, from the late 19th century to the late 1930s and from the latter half of the 1940s to the early 1990s, with no inertia or time delay. In these periods, up to 8 and 25% of the variance of the GST change, respectively, can be attributed to solar activity variations. The solar influence increased in the 1980s to the early 1990s according to data H and began to decrease in the latter half of the 1980s according to data L.