This is from NASA Mar 19, 2007.
"NASA Finds Sun-Climate Connection in Old Nile Records"
"Long-term climate records are a key to understanding how Earth's climate changed in the past and how it may change in the future. Direct measurements of light energy emitted by the sun, taken by satellites and other modern scientific techniques, suggest variations in the sun's activity influence Earth's long-term climate. However, there were no measured climate records of this type until the relatively recent scientific past."
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=1319
Interesting. I'd have to read the paper to see if they are suggesting an actual effect on global atmospheric temperatures (i.e., up or down), or just a redistribution effect. Given the meteorological and ocean linkages described, I suspect the latter. But we also know that reduced sunspot numbers indicate lower solar activity, most noticeably for the Maunder Minimum/Little Ice Age.