A new approach to the long-term reconstruction of the solar irradiance leads to large historical solar forcing

By A. Shapiro, W. Schmutz, Eugene V. Rozanov, M. Schoell, M. Haberreiter, S. Nyeki. 2011

301 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Context. The variable Sun is the most likely candidate for the natural forcing of past climate changes on time scales of 50 to 1000 years. Evidence for this understanding is that the terrestrial climate correlates positively with the solar activity. During the past 10 000 years, the Sun has experienced the substantial variations in activity and there have been numerous attempts to reconstruct solar irradiance. While there is general agreement on how solar forcing varied during the last several hundred years – all reconstructions are proportional to the solar activity – there is scientific controversy on the magnitude of solar forcing. Aims. We present a reconstruction of the total and spectral solar irradiance covering 130 nm–10 μ m from 1610 to the present with an annual resolution and for the Holocene with a 22-year resolution. Methods. We assume that the minimum state of the quiet Sun in time corresponds to the observed quietest area on the present Sun. Then we use available long-term proxies of the solar activity, which are 10 Be isotope concentrations in ice cores and 22-year smoothed neutron monitor data, to interpolate between the present quiet Sun and the minimum state of the quiet Sun. This determines the long-term trend in the solar variability, which is then superposed with the 11-year activity cycle calculated from the sunspot number. The time-dependent solar spectral irradiance from about 7000 BC to the present is then derived using a state-of-the-art radiation code. Results. We derive a total and spectral solar irradiance that was substantially lower during the Maunder minimum than the one observed today. The difference is remarkably larger than other estimations published in the recent literature. The magnitude of the solar UV variability, which indirectly affects the climate, is also found to exceed previous estimates.We discuss in detail the assumptions that lead us to this conclusion.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f9acf294640fcaa12d4bdfe5d65e3c88e7b4eb97

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. I. Usoskin
2. S. Solanki
3. M. Lockwood
4. N. Krivova
5. G. Kovaltsov
6. L. Svalgaard
7. J. Haigh
8. F. Clette

In Molecular Biology

1. I. Usoskin
2. M. Lockwood
3. N. Krivova
4. S. Solanki
5. G. Kovaltsov
6. F. Clette
7. J. Haigh
8. J. Vaquero

Citations in the corpus

• Solar Influence on Global and Regional Climates (2012, background): “Schrijver et al. (2011) argue that the consensus D f S is overestimated, whereas Shapiro et al. (2011) suggest it should be increased by a factor of at least 4, to a value near 1 W m - 2 .”
• Solar Irradiance Variability and Climate (2013, methodology): “…1997), SATIRE-S (Ball 2012; Krivova, Solanki & Floyd 2006; Krivova, Solanki & Unruh 2011; Krivova et al. 2009), the COSI (COde for Solar Irradiance; Shapiro et al. 2011, 2010), SRPM (Solar Radiation Physical Modelling; Fontenla et al. 1999, 2009, 2011, 2004) and OAR (Osservatorio Astronomico di…”
• The role of forcing and internal dynamics in explaining the “Medieval Climate Anomaly” (2011, background): “Furthermore, there are still uncertainties in the exact magnitude of past changes in radiative forcing, in particular the changes in solar irradiance that can justify such a high value (e.g. Schmidt et al. 2011; Shapiro et al. 2011).”
• Revisiting the Sunspot Number (2014, background): “…1976), the GN number played a key role in many recent reconstructions of solar outputs (irradiance, solar wind, total open magnetic flux): e.g. Hathaway et al. 2002, Solanki and Krivova 2004, Wang et al. 2005, Krivova et al. 2007, Vieira et al. 2011, Shapiro et al. 2011 and Owens and Lockwood 2012.”
• The Maunder minimum (1645–1715) was indeed a grand minimum: A reassessment of multiple datasets (2015, methodology): “The full range of this variation is actually considerably larger, since the change obtained by Shapiro et al. (2011), in the correction proposed by Judge et al. (2012), is about 3 W m − 2 .”