
Raimund Muscheler
Professor

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