Solar Variability and Its Effects on Climate

About this book

Solar Variability and Its Effects on Climate presents a state-of-the-art description of the most recent results on solar variability and its possible influence on the Earth's climate and atmosphere. Our primary goal in doing so is to review solar energy flux variations (both electromagnetic and particle) and understand their relations to solar magnetic field changes and global effects, their impact on different atmospheric layers, and – as a collaboration of scientists working on solar-terrestrial physics – to note unresolved questions on an important interdisciplinary area.

One of the highest-level questions facing science today is whether the Earth's atmosphere and climate system changes in a way that we can understand and predict. The Earth's climate is the result of a complex and incompletely understood system of external inputs and interacting parts. Climate change can occur on various time scales as a consequence of natural variability – including solar variability – or anthropogenic causes, or both. The Sun's variability in the form of sunspots and related magnetic activity has been the subject of careful study ever since the earliest telescopic observations. High precision photometric observations of solar-type stars clearly show that year-to-year brightness variations connected with magnetic activity are a widespread phenomenon among such stars. As our nearest star, the Sun is the only star where we can observe and identify a variety of structures and processes which lead to variations in the solar energy output, in both radiative and particle fluxes. Studying event tiny changes in solar energy flux variations may teach us about internal processes taking place in the Sun's convective zone and below.

Contents

Preface
      Judit M. Pap, Peter Fox! Claus Frohlich, Hugh S. Hudson, Jeffrey Kuhn, John McCormack, Gerald North, William Sprigg, and S. I Wu vii

Section 1. Fundamentals  1
Section 1. Fundamentals of the Solar Interior and Atmosphere
      Jeffrey R. Kuhn and John McCormack 3
Long-Term Solar Variability: Evolutionary Time Scales
      Richard R. Radick  5
Solar Variability Caused by Structural Changes of the Convection Zone
      S. Sofia and L. H. Li 15
Theoretical Models of Solar Magnetic Variability
      Manfred Schussler and Dieter Schmitt 33
Global Magnetic-Field Reversal in the Corona
      Boon Chye Low and Mei Zhang 51
Fundamentals of the Earth1s Atmosphere and Climate
      Joanna D. Haigh 65

Section 2. Solar Energy Flux Variations 83
Section 2. Solar Energy Flux Variations
      Hugh S. Hudson 85
Mechanisms of Solar Irradiance Variations
      J. R. Kuhn and J. D. Armstrong 87
Solar Irradiance Variability
      Claus Frohlich 97
Measurement of the Solar Ultraviolet Irradiance
      Gary Rottman, Linton Floyd, and Rodney Viereck 111
Solar Extreme Ultraviolet and X-ray Irradiance Variations
      Tom Woods, Loren W Acton, Scott Bailey, Frank Eparvier, Howard Garcia, Darrell judge, judith Lean, John I Mariska, Don McMullin, Gerhard Schmidtke, Stanley C. Solomon, W Kent Tobiska, Harry R. Warren, and Rodney Viereck 127
Solar Activity and Irradiance Variations
      Peter Fox  141
Solar Irradiance Reference Spectra
      Gerard Thuillier, Linton Floyd, Thomas N. Woods, Richard Cebula, Ernest Hilsenrath, Michel Herse, and Dietrich Labs  171
Solar Energetic Particle Variations
      David Lario and George M. Simnett  195

Section 3. Solar Variability and Climate 217
Section 3. Solar Variability and Climate
      John P. McCormack and Gerald R. North 21 9
Long-Term Solar Variability and Climate Change Based on Radionuclide Data From Ice Cores
      Raiumund Muscheler, jiirg Beer, and Peter W Kubik 221
Solar and Climatic Implications of the Centennial and Millennial Periodicities in Atmospheric L114C Variations
      Paul E. Damon and Alexei N. Peristykh 237
Detecting the ll-year Solar Cycle in the Surface Temperature Field
      G. R. North, Q. WU, and M. J. Stevens 251
Has the Sun Changed Climate? Modeling the Effect of Solar Variability on Climate
         Michael E. Schlesinger and Natalia G. Andronova 261
Effects of Solar UV Variability on the Stratosphere
      Lon L. Hood 283
The Effect of Solar Proton Events on Ozone and Other Constituents
      Charles H. Jackman and Richard D. McPeters 305
Atmospheric Ionization and Clouds as Links Between Solar Activity and Climate
      Brian A. Tinsley and Fangqun Yu 321
Impact of Solar EUV, XUV, and X-Ray Variations on Earth1s Atmosphere
      Tim Fuller-Rowell, Stan Solomon, Ray Roble, and Rodney Viereck 341

Section 4. Science Requirements and Required Future Measurements 355
Science Requirements and Required Future Measurements
      William Sprigg and Judit M. Pap 357

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