The Sun's Role in Long-Term Climate Change

Evidence suggests that changes of solar irradiance in recent centuries have provided a significant climate forcing and that the sun has been one of the principal causes of long-term climate change. During the past two decades the solar forcing has been much smaller than the climate forcing caused by increasing greenhouse gases. But it is incorrect to assume that the sun necessarily will be an insignificant player in climate change of the 21st century. Indeed, I argue that moderate success in curtailing the growth of anthropogenic climate forcings could leave the sun playing a pivotal role in future climate change.     

Solar Variability and the Search for Corresponding Climate Signals

Instrumental and paleodata from the last centuries are investigated to get circumstantial evidence for external influences on the Earth's climate machine. Such influences could be of extraterrestrial and/or anthropogenic origin. Anthropogenic influences are separated from solar on superdecadal time scales and on a hemispheric level using a non-linear regression model. The function to be explained is the northern hemispheric temperature. The model contains two forcing components explicitly: A parameterized anthropogenic component, which describes the aggregated effect of greenhouse gases, aerosols and other anthropogenic climate impacts. A solar component, which describes the solar variability history. The solution of the regression model allows, under certain assumptions, a functional separation of the variability components and provides an estimation of their relative contributions to global warming during the last 140 years.     

Observations of Stratosphere-Troposphere Coupling During Major Solar Eclipses from FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC Constellation

Sudden tropospheric cooling and induced stratospheric warming were found during the 22 July 2009 total solar eclipse. Can the 22 July 2009 hallmark also be seen in other major solar eclipses? Here we hypothesize that the tropospheric cooling and the stratospheric warming can be predicted to occur during a major solar eclipse event. In this work we use the FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC (F3C) Global Positioning System (GPS) radio occultation (RO) data to construct eclipse-time temperature profiles before, during, and after the passages of major solar eclipses for the years 2006–2010. We use four times a day of meteorological analysis from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) global meteorological analysis to construct non-eclipse effect temperature profiles for the same eclipse passages. The eclipse effects were calculated based on the difference between F3C and ECMWF profiles. A?total of five eclipse cases and thirteen non-eclipse cases were analyzed and compared. We found that eclipses cause direct thermal cooling in the troposphere and indirect dynamic warming in the stratosphere. These results are statistically significant. Our results show ?0.6 to ?1.2°C cooling in the troposphere and 0.4 to 1.3°C warming in the middle to lower stratosphere during the eclipses. This characteristic stratosphere-troposphere coupling in temperature profiles represent a distinctive atmospheric responses to the solar eclipses.     

The Effect of Solar UV Irradiance Variations on the Earth's Atmosphere

The response of the lower and middle atmosphere to variations in solar irradiance typical of those observed to take place over the 11-year activity cycle has been investigated. The effects on radiative heating rates of changing total solar irradiance, solar spectral irradiance and two different assumptions concerning stratospheric ozone have been studied with a radiative transfer code. The response in the stratosphere depends on the changes specified in the ozone distribution which is not well known. A general circulation model (GCM) of the atmosphere up to 0.1 mbar (about 65 km) has been used to study the impacts of these changes on the thermodynamical structure. The results in the troposphere are very similar to those reported by Haigh99 using a quite different GCM. In the middle atmosphere the model is able to reproduce quite well the observed seasonal evolution of temperature and wind anomalies. Calculations of radiative forcing due to solar variation are presented. These show that the thermal infrared component of the forcing, due to warming of the stratosphere, is important but suggest a near balance between the longwave and shortwave effects of the increased ozone so that ozone change may not be important for net radiative forcing. However, the structure of the ozone change does affect the detailed temperature response and the spectral composition of the radiation entering the troposphere.     

What Are Special About Ground-Level Events?

Ground level events (GLEs) occupy the high-energy end of gradual solar energetic particle (SEP) events. They are associated with coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and solar flares, but we still do not clearly understand the special conditions that produce these rare events. During Solar Cycle 23, a total of 16 GLEs were registered, by ground-based neutron monitors. We first ask if these GLEs are clearly distinguishable from other SEP events observed from space. Setting aside possible difficulties in identifying all GLEs consistently, we then try to find observables which may unmistakably isolate these GLEs by studying the basic properties of the associated eruptions and the active regions (ARs) that produced them. It is found that neither the magnitudes of the CMEs and flares nor the complexities of the ARs give sufficient conditions for GLEs. It is possible to find CMEs, flares or ARs that are not associated with GLEs but that have more extreme properties than those associated with GLEs. We also try to evaluate the importance of magnetic field connection of the AR with Earth on the detection of GLEs and their onset times. Using the potential field source surface (PFSS) model, a half of the GLEs are found to be well-connected. However, the GLE onset time with respect to the onset of the associated flare and CME does not strongly depend on how well-connected the AR is. The GLE onset behavior may be largely determined by when and where the CME-driven shock develops. We could not relate the shocks responsible for the onsets of past GLEs with features in solar images, but the combined data from the Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) and the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) have the potential to change this for GLEs that may occur in the rising phase of Solar Cycle 24.     

Multidecadal Signal of Solar Variability in the Upper Troposphere During the 20th Century

Studies based on data from the past 25–45 years show that irradiance changes related to the 11-yr solar cycle affect the circulation of the upper troposphere in the subtropics and midlatitudes. The signal has been interpreted as a northward displacement of the subtropical jet and the Ferrel cell with increasing solar irradiance. In model studies on the 11-yr solar signal this could be related to a weakening and at the same time broadening of the Hadley circulation initiated by stratospheric ozone anomalies. Other studies, focusing on the direct thermal effect at the Earth’s surface on multidecadal scales, suggest a strengthening of the Hadley circulation induced by an increased equator-to-pole temperature gradient. In this paper we analyse the solar signal in the upper troposphere since 1922, using statistical reconstructions based on historical upper-air data. This allows us to address the multidecadal variability of solar irradiance, which was supposedly large in the first part of the 20th century. Using a simple regression model we find a consistent signal on the 11-yr time scale which fits well with studies based on later data. We also find a significant multidecadal signal that is similar to the 11-yr signal, but somewhat stronger. We interpret this signal as a poleward shift of the subtropical jet and the Ferrel cell. Comparing the magnitude of the two signals could provide important information on the feedback mechanisms involved in the solar climate relationship with respect to the Hadley and Ferrel circulations. However, in view of the uncertainty in the solar irradiance reconstructions, such interpretations are not currently possible.     

Flux-Transport Solar Dynamos

Large-scale solar dynamo models were first built by Parker (1955). Over the past half a century these models have evolved significantly. We discuss here the development of a class of large-scale dynamo models which include, along with the α-effect and Ω-effect, an important third process, flux transport by meridional circulation. We present the properties of this ‘flux-transport’ dynamo, including the crucial role meridional circulation plays in giving this dynamo predictive power.     

Solar Influences on Dynamical Coupling Between the Stratosphere and Troposphere

We use a simplified atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) to investigate the response of the lower atmosphere to thermal perturbations in the lower stratosphere. The results show that generic heating of the lower stratosphere tends to weaken the sub-tropical jets and the tropospheric mean meridional circulations. The positions of the jets, and the extent of the Hadley cells, respond to the distribution of the stratospheric heating, with low latitude heating displacing them poleward, and uniform heating displacing them equatorward. The patterns of response to the low latitude heating are similar to those found to be associated with solar variability in previous observational data analysis, and to the effects of varying solar UV radiation in sophisticated AGCMs. In order to investigate the chain of causality involved in converting the stratospheric thermal forcing to a tropospheric climate signal we conduct an experiment which uses an ensemble of model spin-ups to analyse the time development of the response to an applied stratospheric perturbation. We find that the initial effect of the change in static stability at the tropopause is to reduce the eddy momentum flux convergence in this region. This is followed by a vertical transfer of the momentum forcing anomaly by an anomalous mean circulation to the surface, where it is partly balanced by surface stress anomalies. The unbalanced part drives the evolution of the vertically integrated zonal flow. We conclude that solar heating of the stratosphere may produce changes in the circulation of the troposphere even without any direct forcing below the tropopause. We suggest that the impact of the stratospheric changes on wave propagation is key to the mechanisms involved.     

A Possible Transfer Mechanism for the 11-Year Solar Cycle to the Lower Stratosphere

Observational evidence of the 11-year solar cycle (SC) modulation of stratosphere temperatures and winds from the ERA-40 dataset is reviewed, with emphasis on the Northern winter hemisphere. A frequency modulation of sudden warming events is noted, with warmings occurring earlier in solar minimum periods than in solar maximum periods. The observed interaction between the influence of the SC and the quasi biennial oscillation (QBO) on the frequency of sudden warmings is noted as a possible clue for understanding their mechanism of influence. A possible transfer route for the 11-year solar cycle from the equatorial stratopause region to the lowest part of the stratosphere is proposed, via an influence on sudden warming events and the associated induced meridional circulation. SC and QBO composites of zonal wind anomalies show anomalous wind distributions in the subtropical upper stratosphere in early winter. Mechanistic model experiments are reviewed that demonstrate a sensitivity of sudden warmings to small wind anomalies in this region. Various diagnostics from these experiments are shown, including EP fluxes and their divergence and also the synoptic evolution of the polar vortex, in order to understand the mechanism of the influence. Some recent GCM experiments to investigate the SC/QBO interaction are also described. They simulate reasonably well the observed SC/QBO interaction of sudden warming events and appear to support the hypothesis that tropical/subtropical upper stratospheric wind anomalies are an important influence on the timing of sudden warmings.     

Solar Variability and the Earth's Climate: Introduction and Overview

Numerous attempts have been made over the years to link various aspects of solar variability to changes in the Earth's climate. There has been growing interest in this possible connection in recent years, spurred largely by the need to understand the natural causes of climate change, against which the expected global warming due to man's activities will have to be detected. The time scale of concern here is that of decades to centuries, and excludes the longer millennial scale in which orbital variations play a dominant role. The field has long been plagued by the lack of an acceptable physical mechanism by which solar variability can affect climate, but the discovery of variability in the Sun's total irradiance (the solar ``constant' of meteorology) by spacecraft instruments has pointed to a direct mechanism. Other less direct mechanisms that have been suggested involve variations in the Sun's ultraviolet flux and in the plasma outflow of the solar wind. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the current state of the field, emphasizing the proposed mechanisms as an introduction to the more detailed papers that follow. The particular case of sea-surface temperature data will be used as an illustration.     

Measurements of solar total irradiance and its variability

The development of electrically self calibrated cavity pyrheliometric instrumentation that occurred in the early 20th century provided the technological base for experiments to detect variability of the solar total irradiance. Experiments from ground based observatories, aircraft and balloons during the 1st half of the 20th century were unable to achieve sufficient accuracy or long term precision to unambiguously detect irradiance variations of solar origin. Refinements in pyrheliometric technology during the 1960's and 1970's and the accessibility of extended experimental opportunities above the Earth's atmosphere in recent years have provided the first direct observations of solar total irradiance variability and provided the cornerstone observations of a long term database on solar irradiance. A program of solar irradiance monitoring has evolved to sustain the database over at least 22 years, corresponding to a single cycle of solar magnetic activity, and the shortest well identified cycle of climate variation. Direct links between total irradiance variations, solar magnetic activity and the solar global 5 min oscillation phenomena have been derived from recent space flight observations by the SMM/ACRIM I experiment.     

Communicating across the solar system

The next chapter in our ongoing quest for discovery began in the last half of the 20th century, with the initiation of robotic exploration of our solar system. In less than fifty years, we have broken free of Earth's gravity and flown spacecraft to every planet in the solar system except Pluto. The ultimate goal of this exploration is to establish a virtual (and, perhaps, someday, an actual) human presence throughout the solar system. Clearly, communications is one of the central elements of creating such a virtual presence, and also one of the biggest technical challenges in planetary exploration. Transmit performance is characterized by the product of antenna gain and transmitter power, while receive performance scales with the ratio of aperture effective area to system noise temperature. A number of key communications technology advances have enabled our planetary exploration to date, and future technology will open the door to new vistas in space exploration     

Equatorial and Low Latitude Ionospheric Effects During Sudden Stratospheric Warming Events

There are several external sources of ionospheric forcing, including these are solar wind-magnetospheric processes and lower atmospheric winds and waves. In this work we review the observed ion-neutral coupling effects at equatorial and low latitudes during large meteorological events called sudden stratospheric warming (SSW). Research in this direction has been accelerated in recent years mainly due to: (1) extensive observing campaigns, and (2) solar minimum conditions. The former has been instrumental to capture the events before, during, and after the peak SSW temperatures and wind perturbations. The latter has permitted a reduced forcing contribution from solar wind-magnetospheric processes. The main ionospheric effects are clearly observed in the zonal electric fields (or vertical E×B drifts), total electron content, and electron and neutral densities. We include results from different ground- and satellite-based observations, covering different longitudes and years. We also present and discuss the modeling efforts that support most of the observations. Given that SSW can be forecasted with a few days in advance, there is potential for using the connection with the ionosphere for forecasting the occurrence and evolution of electrodynamic perturbations at low latitudes, and sometimes also mid latitudes, during arctic winter warmings.     

Evolution of the Sunspot Number and Solar Wind $$ Time Series

The past two decades have witnessed significant changes in our knowledge of long-term solar and solar wind activity. The sunspot number time series (1700-present) developed by Rudolf Wolf during the second half of the 19th century was revised and extended by the group sunspot number series (1610–1995) of Hoyt and Schatten during the 1990s. The group sunspot number is significantly lower than the Wolf series before ～1885. An effort from 2011–2015 to understand and remove differences between these two series via a series of workshops had the unintended consequence of prompting several alternative constructions of the sunspot number. Thus it has been necessary to expand and extend the sunspot number reconciliation process. On the solar wind side, after a decade of controversy, an ISSI International Team used geomagnetic and sunspot data to obtain a high-confidence time series of the solar wind magnetic field strength (\(B\)) from 1750-present that can be compared with two independent long-term (> ～600 year) series of annual \(B\)-values based on cosmogenic nuclides. In this paper, we trace the twists and turns leading to our current understanding of long-term solar and solar wind activity.     

原子氧对Kapton／Al薄膜性能影响研究

模拟空间环境下原子氧辐照条件,通过采用固定的原子氧束流密度进行不同时间辐照试验,研究了温控涂层材料Kapton/Al薄膜的质量损失、光学性能、表面形貌和表面粗糙度的演化规律.试验结果表明,原子氧对材料的剥蚀量与原子氧的作用时间成正比例关系.材料辐照后太阳吸收率发生明显变化,而辐射率几乎不发生变化.辐照后试样表面的粗糙度,是影响太阳吸收率变化主要因素.随着辐照时间的增长,材料表面粗糙度增加,导致太阳吸收率增大.     

Modelling solar irradiance variations: Comparison with observations,including line-ratio variations

Solar irradiance variations show a strong temporal and spectral dependence. The progression of the Sun through its activity cycle as well as solar rotation are mirrored in the irradiance variations. The spectral dependence is such that the variations are several magnitudes larger in the EUV than in the visible or infrared.We present a simple 3-component model that is based on the assumption that changes in the solar flux are exclusively due to changes in spot and facular coverage. We compare our model to observations of the spectral solar irradiance variations.Despite its simplicity, we find that the agreement between our model and the observations is surprisingly good. We also explore the reliability and the limitations of our approach by comparing observations of the solar facular contrast and of the changes in spectral line depths with our calculations.     

Detailed magnetic structure and stochastic threshold

Non-linear evolution of reconnection is too slow to explain-by itself-fast phenomena such as internal disruptions in tokamaks or flares in the solar atmosphere. It has been proposed that the change in topology could lead to field line stochastization, and hence to highly increased transport. An important objection to this idea is that the increase of transport coefficients should smoothly follow the amplitude of the perturbation, while the observations show a catastrophic transition. We have shown 1) that the shape of the structures (and not only their size or amplitude) evolve during non-linear evolution 2) that the stochastic threshold can be strongly influenced by the detailed shape. Therefore, sharp transitions can appear during the evolution, due to the combination of these two effects. We will first consider an idealized situation, namely the two-waves problem in slab geometry, for which we will study the effect of the separatrix shape on the stochastic threshold. In the second part, we will present an application to the internal disruption in tokamaks, with anm=1 perturbation in a toroidal magnetic configuration. In the last part, we will discuss possible applications of the studies on shape effects to the behaviour of trapped particles in structures of the solar atmosphere.     

The Influence of Total Solar Irradiance on Climate

To estimate the effect of the solar variability on the climate, two estimates of the solar intensity variations during the last three centuries have been used as forcing in numerical simulations. The model employed to carry out the experiments was the same coupled global ocean-atmosphere model used in a number of studies to assess the effect of the anthropogenic greenhouse gases on climate. The near surface temperature and the tropospheric temperature distribution shows a clear response to the variability of the solar input. Even the thermohaline circulation reacts on the large amplitudes in the forcing. In the stratosphere, the response pattern is similar as in the observations, however, the 11-year cycle found in the forcing data does not excite an appreciable response. This might be due to the missing parameterisation of the increase in the UV-radiation at the solar cycle maximum and the connected increase of the stratospheric ozone concentration.     

Solar Wind Conditions and Composition During the Genesis Mission as Measured by in situ Spacecraft

We describe the Genesis mission solar-wind sample collection period and the solar wind conditions at the L1 point during this 2.3-year period. In order to relate the solar wind samples to solar composition, the conditions under which the samples were collected must be understood in the context of the long-term solar wind. We find that the state of the solar wind was typical of conditions over the past four solar cycles. However, Genesis spent a relatively large fraction of the time in coronal-hole flow as compared to what might have been expected for the declining phase of the solar cycle. Data from the Solar Wind Ion Composition Spectrometer (SWICS) on the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) are used to determine the effectiveness of the Genesis solar-wind regime selection algorithm. The data collected by SWICS confirm that the Genesis algorithm successfully separated and collected solar wind regimes having distinct solar origins, particularly in the case of the coronal hole sample. The SWICS data also demonstrate that the different regimes are elementally fractionated. When compared with Ulysses composition data from the previous solar cycle, we find a similar degree of fractionation between regimes as well as fractionation relative to the average photospheric composition. The Genesis solar wind samples are under long-term curation at NASA Johnson Space Center so that as sample analysis techniques evolve, pristine solar wind samples will be available to the scientific community in the decades to come. This article and a companion paper (Wiens et al. 2013, this issue) provide post-flight information necessary for the analysis of the Genesis array and foil solar wind samples and the Genesis solar wind ion concentrator samples, and thus serve to complement the Space Science Review volume, The Genesis Mission (v. 105, 2003).     

The Composition of the Solar Wind in Polar Coronal Holes

The solar wind charge state and elemental compositions have been measured with the Solar Wind Ion Composition Spectrometers (SWICS) on Ulysses and ACE for a combined period of about 25 years. This most extensive data set includes all varieties of solar wind flows and extends over more than one solar cycle. With SWICS the abundances of all charge states of He, C, N, O, Ne, Mg, Si, S, Ar and Fe can be reliably determined (when averaged over sufficiently long time periods) under any solar wind flow conditions. Here we report on results of our detailed analysis of the elemental composition and ionization states of the most unbiased solar wind from the polar coronal holes during solar minimum in 1994–1996, which includes new values for the abundance S, Ca and Ar and a more accurate determination of the ²⁰Ne abundance. We find that in the solar minimum polar coronal hole solar wind the average freezing-in temperature is ∼1.1×10⁶ K, increasing slightly with the mass of the ion. Using an extrapolation method we derive photospheric abundances from solar wind composition measurements. We suggest that our solar-wind-derived values should be used for the photospheric ratios of Ne/Fe=1.26±0.28 and Ar/Fe=0.030±0.007.