Summary
Quantifying the contribution of solar variability to past and present climate change has been an important and controversial aspect of climate research. 10Be records from polar ice have played a key role in extending solar activity reconstructions beyond the period of direct observations of the sun. The processes responsible for 10Be production are well known; high solar shielding of the galactic cosmic radiation during periods of high solar activity decreases the 10Be production rate and vice versa for low solar activities. However, the processes governing the delivery of 10Be to the polar ice core archives, atmospheric transport and deposition, are poorly understood and introduce uncertainty to reconstructions of solar activity from 10Be. In particular, the magnitude of ‘climate feedback’ into 10Be records is not well known. Precisely dated, high resolution ice core records provide a new opportunity to work toward constraint of the solar variability component and climate component in 10Be ice core records [Pedro et al., 2006]. We focus on two such ice core records, from Law Dome (Antarctica) and Das2 (Greenland) that span from present day to ~1940 at annual resolution. The records overlap with satellite and ground based observations of solar variability and cosmic ray flux and also with satellite, instrumental and ice core proxy records of climate variation. We aim to constrain and separate the solar variability signal in the 10Be records from the climate induced signal and provide techniques to improve the reconstruction of solar activity from 10Be.