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Article PreviewThis is a preview of the full article. New Scientist Full Access is available free to magazine subscribers. To continue reading log in now, on the right. Don't blame the Sun
GREENHOUSE effect sceptics may have lost their final excuse. The Sun has been dethroned as the dominant source of climate change, leaving the finger of blame pointing at humans. A correlation between the sunspot cycle and temperatures in the northern hemisphere seemed to account for most of the warming seen up until 1985. But new results reveal that for the past 15 years something other than the Sun—probably greenhouse emissions—has pushed temperatures higher. In 1991, Knud Lassen of the Danish Meteorological Institute in Copenhagen and his colleague Eigil Friis-Christensen found a strong correlation between the length of the solar cycle and temperature changes throughout the northern hemisphere. Initially, they used sunspot and temperature measurements from 1861 to 1989, but later found that climate records dating back four centuries supported their findings. The mysterious—and unexplained—relationship appeared to account for nearly 80 per cent of the measured temperature changes over this period. ... The complete article is 460 words long.
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