How Much Has the Sun Influenced Temperature Trends?
Mark Keenan
Global Research
What a Recent Study Means for Global Climate Policy
Highlighted by the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences (CERES), the study found that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) considered only a small subset of available Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) datasets when assessing the Sun’s influence on climate change — specifically those showing low solar variability. The consequence, according to the authors, is that the IPCC may have been premature in ruling out a substantial role for the Sun in recent warming.
Re-examining the Sun-Climate Connection | The researchers analyzed 16 major solar output datasets, including those used by the IPCC. Their findings were striking: depending on which datasets are used, scientists can reach opposite conclusions about what drives modern temperature trends. Dr. Ronan Connolly, lead author of the study, explains:
💬 “The IPCC is mandated to find a consensus on the causes of climate change. But science doesn’t work by consensus. By effectively only considering the datasets that support their chosen narrative, the IPCC have hampered scientific progress into genuinely understanding the causes of climate change.”
This conclusion cuts to the heart of the “climate change attribution problem” — what proportion of the claimed small increases in warming should be attributed to natural versus human causes. By narrowing acceptable data, the IPCC may have ‘unintentionally’ amplified the apparent role of greenhouse gases while minimizing natural variability.


















