43 J. U. Beer et al., in The Sun as a Variable Star: Solar and Stellar Irradiance Variability, Proceedings of IAU Colloquium 143, 20 to 25 June 1993, J. M. Pap, C. Frohlich, H. S. Hudson, S. K. Solanki, Eds. (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994), pp. 291-300.

44. M. Lockwood, R. Stamper, M. N. Wild, Nature 399, 437 (1999) .

45. D. V. Hoyt and K. H. Schatten, J. Geophys. Res. 98, 18895 (1993) .

12. J. Lean and D. Rind, J. Clim. 11, 3069 (199 [CrossRef].

22. J. Lean, J. Beer, R. Bradley, Geophys. Res. Lett. 22, 3195 (1995) [CrossRef] [ISI].

I’d also check wikipedia for the RC party line. They will say TSI is about 1365 Watts/meter squared. This value varies 0.1% from a given solar sunspot minimum to maximum. It may vary 1% or more routinely over 2 century cycles (Gleissberg?).

At IceCap there is also a fine library including a long paper by Gerlich and Teuschner(sp?)-may have to use the search tool to find it there. Important issue they mention is that the visible light spectrum, normally what is refered to by TotalSolarIrradiance is actually only 40% of incident light, remainder being 40% IR and 20% UV. During solar flares UV on its own can jump 100% (associated with sunspots).

TSI may or may not include the IR and UV components by every definition.

This, however, still leaves unaccounted, particle radiation carried by the solar wind knotted in the IMF. Pulses of this current are especially noticable now during solar minimum (coronal hole induced auroras) and as the IMF flips southward can enter unimpeded into earth’s atmosphere. The pulses are on the order of teraWatt inputs.

By these criteria TSI does not represent the total energy received by the earth by any common definition.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/290/5499/2133

Science 15 December 2000:
Vol. 290. no. 5499, pp. 2133 - 2137
DOI: 10.1126/science.290.5499.2133

External Control of 20th Century Temperature by Natural and Anthropogenic Forcings
Peter A. Stott,1* S. F. B. Tett,1 G. S. Jones,1 M. R. Allen,2 J. F. B. Mitchell,1 G. J. Jenkins1

“The solar and volcanic forcings we use are derived from reconstructions based on proxy data and are therefore also subject to considerable uncertainties, although recent explosive volcanic eruptions are likely to have cooled climate, and independent records of solar activity levels inferred from the cosmogenic isotope 10Be (43) and geomagnetic records (44) provide support to reconstructions (22, 45) that show generally increasing solar activity during the 20th century (12).”

He doesn’t indicate the size of the trend in the paper though.

I highly recommend Nir Shaviv’s site, siencebits.com.

These two posts, http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar and http://www.sciencebits.com/CosmicRaysClimate, are very good reads, but they don’t get into the TSI measurments.

Basically, warmers seem to look at the trend over the past century, but there are many diffent types of solar activity and while solar activity has peaked around 80, many also say it is still higher than in the past (as you said). I’m not sure sure about the 80s date, I think real decine happened later.

Read the comment in Nir’s posts, very interesting stuff. Basically, the types of cosmic rays approaching earch vary independently and the types that affect cloud cover are less correlated with solar activty than cosmic rays in general. Warmers lump all CRs together, Nir looks at the high energy level rays.

I’m a bit skeptical, but as Nir explains it, there are also significant lags (similar to the ones assumed for CO2, warming of the oceans and such). They explain part of the continued rise after solar activity begins to decline.