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Comment on the paper “Characteristic time scales of decadal to centennial changes in global surface temperatures over the past 150 years ” by J.L. Le Mouël, F. Lopes and V. Courtillot First published: 14 October 2019 in Earth and Space Science
  • Yannis Cuypers,
  • Francis Codron,
  • Michel Crépon
Yannis Cuypers
Sorbonne Université

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Francis Codron
Sorbonne-Université
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Michel Crépon
IPSL/LOCEAN, Sorbonne Université (Université Paris VI, CNRS, IRD, MNHN), Paris, France
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Abstract

In their paper, Le mouël et al, (2019) argued that over the past 150 years “most of the variability of surface temperatures could be natural and primarily controlled by the Sun”. We do not agree with their conclusions for several reasons which are (1) a biased interpretation of the Fourier and SSA spectrum, which show no significant co-variability between sunspot amounts and emperature, (2) the small radiative forcing associated with the long-term sunspot variability, and finally the evidence that the slowly-varying components of the temperature and sunspots time-series show opposite trend in the last 30 years.