Willie Soon

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Willie Soon (Wei-Hock Soon) (born 1966) is an astrophysicist at the Solar and Stellar Physics Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. With Sallie Baliunas, he is known for his views that most global warming is caused by solar variation.

In 2003 they published a controversial literature review paper, partly funded by the American Petroleum Institute [1] in the journal Climate Research. The incoming editor Hans von Storch believed that the review process had "utterly failed"; when the publisher refused to permit an editorial on this, he resigned [2]; subsequently four other editors also resigned. The paper also attracted highly critical published responses [3].

Beyond a wide range of technical papers on his research in the physics of climate change and solar behavior, he produced his first major book, Maunder Minimum and the Variable Sun Earth Connection (2004), co-written with former Ericsson Radio Systems technical editor and independent scientist Steven Haywood Yaskell. The book partly seeks to restore the historical and proxy records of deep climate change by examining in detail the extended global cooling period on earth known as the Maunder Minimum (1645?-1715?). This period is noticeable for its dearth of solar activity, today measured by isotopic records and then, gleaned from eyewitness accounts (of unusual cool and storm activity in the northern hemisphere) and scientific observations.

Soon also co-wrote two popular journal articles with Yaskell, outlining the sun-climate issues of Maunder and wife, Annie S.D. Maunder in an article for Astronomy Now (UK:Oct.1998) and one on stratovolcanic eruptions and weak solar maximums working in tandem to degrade regional earth warmning for the Mercury (US:ASP:2003).

He is the science director [4] and contributor at Tech Central Station and is associated with the George C. Marshall Institute, where he recently with Sallie Baliunas authored, Lessons and Limits of Climate History: Was 20th Century Climate Unusual? He and Baliunas have also written for the Fraser Institute of Canada regarding Sun-climate connections as a "guide to the science."

[edit] References

"Sunny Occupation", All Malaysia.info, April 18, 2005.
Soon, W., and Baliunas, S. (2003): “Proxy climate and environmental changes of the past 1,000 years.” Climate Research, 23: 89-110 [5]