Maybe unusual changes in solar wind parameters and heliospheric parameters cause atmospheric disturbances which lead to unusual solar disturbances.
The main physical quantity affecting the Earth climate is - in the end - the amount of solar radiation hitting the Earth atmosphere and the ground. This relatively simple quantity is related to a huge number of different phenomena, affecting the amount of emitted and absorbed radiation. For instance, it seems possible (altough not yet demonstrated) that the amount of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere (modulated by the solar cycle with a periodicity by 11-years) could modify the rate of cloud formation, hence decreasing the amount of solar radiation hitting the ground and finally the greenhouse effect. Another example: the Ozone formation rate is related to the amount of EUV radiation coming from the Sun and Ozone is very important as you know because is our screen against biologically harmful EUV radiation. The amount of EUV radiation emitted by the Sun is also modulated by the 11-year solar activity cycle, the EUV part of solar spectrum has a much higher (up tp 80%) variability with respect to the whole integrated spectrum (variability of TSI by 0.15%), but sporadic increases in the emitted EUV radiation are also observed during solar flares, and this could reduce for short time the amount of Ozone in the atmosphere. Nevertheless, those mentioned above are long-temr variabilities (timescale of years) and, as fas as I know, there are no demonstrated direct connections between short-therm (timescales of days-months) variabilities in the heliospheric conditions related to the Sun and the Earth climate.
If you refer to the influence of solar cycles on the climate, there is a nice article about that on realclimate:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/07/the-lure-of-solar-forcing/
The solar energy acts on atmosphere following various ways
1) the solar radiations heat the atmosphere
- absorption of UV and EUV in stratosphere generate for example atmospheric tides
- the visble and infrared radiations arrive at the ground level and play a key role in low atmospher
2) High speed solar Wind, CME and all other solar events disturbing the auroral zone produce electric current (J) and electric field (E) and energy can be transferred to the atmosphere by 2 ways
- momentum transfert JxB
_ Joule heating J.E, the Joule heating can produce gravity waes and also an Hadley convection cell between the pole and the equator
You could also refer to the SID projects (fairly basic education stuff but with some research components). I personally liked the way those introduced the solar inonospheric disturbance notions to early age explorers. The colleagues at Stanford still have the information at: http://sid.stanford.edu/
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