The Revised Sunspot Record in Comparison to Cosmogenic Radionuclide-Based Solar Activity Reconstructions

Summary, in English

Recent revisions in the sunspot records illustrate the challenges related to obtaining a 400-year-long observational record of past solar-activity changes. Cosmogenic radionuclides offer the possibility of obtaining an alternative and completely independent record of solar variability. Here, we illustrate that these records offer great potential for quantitative solar-activity reconstructions far back into the past, and we provide updated radionuclide-based solar-activity reconstructions for the past 2000 years. However, cosmogenic-radionuclide records are also influenced by processes independent of solar activity, leading to the need for critical assessment and correction for the non-solar influences. Independent of these uncertainties, we show a very good agreement between the revised sunspot records and the ¹⁰Be records from Antarctica and, in particular, the ¹⁴C-based solar-activity reconstructions. This comparison offers the potential of identifying remaining non-solar processes in the radionuclide-based solar-activity reconstructions, but it also helps identifying remaining biases in the recently revised sunspot records.

• Author: Raimund Muscheler; Florian Adolphi; Konstantin Herbst; Andreas Nilsson
• Department/s: Quaternary Sciences; MERGE: ModElling the Regional and Global Earth system
• Publishing year: 2016-11
• Language: English
• Pages: 3025-3043
• Publication/Series: Solar Physics
• Volume: 291
• Issue: 9-10
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11207-016-0969-z
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: Springer
• Topic: Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
• Keywords: Be; C; Cosmogenic radionuclides; Solar modulation; Solar-activity reconstruction; Sunspots
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 0038-0938