Sunlight at Earth's surface has surged since the 1980s.
Germany's Potsdam station shows 15 more W/m² of solar energy reaching the ground than during the 1970s dimming era.
The Netherlands, Switzerland and Japan all show the same trend. Austria shows even more: 23 extra W/m².
It's called 'global brightening.' As air pollution dropped, the atmosphere cleared and sunlight flooded back in.
That increase in surface radiation is 10 times larger than the forcing from CO2 over the same period.
In short: the air got cleaner, the sunlight stronger and the land a little warmer. The data say so, the physics say so, it's only the narrative that doesn't.
Increased efforts to reduce air pollution since the seventies are indeed the most likely and reasonable explanation for higher temperatures on the ground.
E.g. smog conditions are unheard of in Germany since around 2000 when it was a regular occurrence before.
Original paper: Wild et al. 2021, GRL (doi:10.1029/2020GL092216). It confirms multidecadal SSR variations of order 10 W/m² at Potsdam (all-sky and clear-sky), from aerosols after pollution drop. Similar brightening seen in NL/CH/JP/AT stations. Local +15–23 W/m² roughly 10× CO₂ RF (~1.2 W/m² since 1980s). Claims match the regional data; global average is smaller.
