Changes in solar radiation, known as solar forcing, have had only a very small effect on climate change, a member of the UN's top panel of climate scientists said today.

The comment, made by a member of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), followed the leak of a draft IPCC report late last year, which included comments on the effect of solar forcing on climate change. At the time of the leak, the climate change skeptics blog, Watts Up With That, drew attention to what it described as a "game-changing admission of enhanced solar forcing" but co-chair of the IPCC's Working Group 1, Professor Thomas Stocker said that solar forcing actually did not play a major role. "As the scientific publications indicate, the assessment is not yet completed. We are looking at an extremely small effect here, that's what one can say from the publications but I should stress the experts are still performing their assessment," he said a press conference in Hobart today.