New perspectives for long-term climate predictions?

The natural, 11-year cycle of solar activity is apparently influencing long-term climate fluctuations in the Northern Hemisphere. An international team of scientists led by GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel showed that the so-called North Atlantic Oscillation, one of the dominant circulation patterns on the Northern Hemisphere, is phased-locked to the decadal solar activity with a delay of one or two years. The study appears today in the international journal Nature Communications.