Does a slowly varying component of solar irradiance exist?
Abstract
Fluctuations of total irradiance, S, caused by sunspots and faculae, are too small (∼0.1%) to force current climate models. Recent reconstructions of S incorporate an additional, slowly varying component, which follows the smoothed spot or group number, or the cycle period. But evidence for this larger (0.2--0.5%) variation, originally based on photometry of sun-like stars, is weakened by recent findings that true solar analog stars are difficult to find. Also, disappearance of the chromospheric network in the early 20th century, implied by these reconstructions, is not observed in archival solar images. I will show some new evidence for an additional component, suggested by the high correlation found between global temperature and the (small-amplitude) variation of S reconstructed using recently digitized facular areas between 1915--1999.The UV irradiance variation modeled from the same data exhibits much lower correlation with global warming, so it is less likely to account for a solar activity signature in 20th century climate. This indirect evidence suggests a mechanism that might amplify the small modulation of S caused specifically by the net effect of bright faculae and dark spots. We now recognize that amplification on multi-decadal time scales could only operate in near- photospheric layers, given the enormous thermal inertia of the deeper solar atmosphere. Also, increasingly tight constraints on such a mechanism are placed by solar photometry and radiometry, by spectro-photometric monitoring of the quiet photospheric effective temperature, and by absence of detectable solar diameter variations. The shrinking set of mechanisms that might satisfy these constraints deserves closer study, and I will discuss some interesting new observational diagnostics, such as bolometric imaging of the photosphere, planned to search for such processes. But at present, little direct evidence exists for a large-amplitude, multi-decadal variation of S (or of UV flux). A clearer recognition of this fact would benefit climate research by stimulating study of possible climate sensitivity to the smaller variations in S and UV irradiance that have been observed over the past two solar cycles, and to other potential solar drivers such as heliospheric modulation of cosmic rays.
- Publication:
-
EGS - AGU - EUG Joint Assembly
- Pub Date:
- April 2003
- Bibcode:
- 2003EAEJA.....4696F