A 22-year period appears to be significant in the hemispheric marine night air and sea surface temperatures, from harmonic analyses for 1856-1986, 1 but there is no significant 11-year period. The most obvious mechanism for any solar influence on global surface temperature is a variation in solar irradiance. No reliable long-term data series is yet available on the total solar flux. It appears from the 8-year running mean of the high-pass filtered southern hemisphere night marine air temperature data that the temperature increases after the solar northern polar magnetic field turns positive and decreases after the solar magnetic field reverses polarity. It is well known that the frequency and intensity of geomagnetic and substorm activities are related to the vertical component B(z) of the interplanetary magnetic field at the Earth. Enhanced precipitation of electrons into the atmosphere in auroral and subauroral regions occurs when B(z) is negative. Energetic electron precipitation events can be major sources of odd hydrogen and odd nitrogen in the atmosphere, which in turn remove ozone catalytically at altitudes of 60 to 80 km in the Earth's middle atmosphere. Evidence from these and multi-MeV electron events are considered here as a possible mechanism for the 22-year variation in sea surface temperature if these precipitation events are effectively regulated by the B(z) component of the interplanetary magnetic field or if high speed solar wind streams are subjected to a 22-year variation in the sun's magnetic field.
