Sunshine just isn’t what it used to be. Since 2000 less sunlight has been reaching the Earth’s surface, say solar physicists. But paradoxically this drop in radiation hasn’t cooled our planet.
Philip Goode’s team at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark measured the amount of sunlight reflected by the Earth’s atmosphere onto the moon and back again. They found that the Earth is reflecting 3 per cent more sunlight than it did between 1985 and 2000 (Eos, vol 87, p 37).
The effect could be caused by increasing cloud cover, says Goode. Recent data from the International…
