That was when Danish physicist, Henrik Svensmark, decided to explore the matter after coming across a 1991 paper by fellow Danes Eigil Friis-Christensen and Knud Lassen that charted solar variations and global surface temperatures since 1860.

FORBES: Sorry, But With Global Warming It's The Sun, Stupid

"The possibility that current climate models underestimate the effect of solar variations on climate is probably the single most contentious issue in climate research at the moment, " said Dr Myles Allen of the department of physics at Oxford University.

BBC: UK seeks to go it alone in space

Joanna Haigh, a solar physicist at Imperial College London, has spent a fair bit of research time investigating mechanisms that could potentially amplify solar changes into meaningful temperature variations on human timescales on Earth.

BBC: Solar predictions bring heat and light