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Extreme value theory applied to long-term sunspot areas

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Abstract

Solar activity, such as sunspots and flares, has a great impact on humans, living beings, and technologies in the whole world. Changes in sunspots will influence high-frequency and space-navigation radio communications. Based on the full-disk, southern and northern hemispheres sunspot areas (SAs) data in 1874–2023 from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich (RGO) USAF/NOAA, extreme value theory (EVT) is applied to predict the trend of the 25th and 26th solar cycles (SCs) in this work. Two methods with EVT, the block maxima (BM) approach and the peaks-over-threshold (POT) approach, are employed to research solar extreme events. The former method focuses on each block’s maximum sunspot areas value and is applied for the generalized extreme value (GEV) distribution. The latter method aims to select the extreme values exceeding a threshold value and is used to obtain the generalized Pareto (GP) distribution. It is the first time that the EVT is applied on the sunspot areas data from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich (RGO) USAF/NOAA. The analysis indicates that the estimated 8-year return levels for sunspot areas are 5701 and 6258 using the two methods, while the estimated 19-year return levels are all 7165. This suggests that the trends of the 25th and 26th solar cycles will be stronger than that of the 24th solar cycle.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Royal Observatory, Greenwich (RGO) USAF/NOAA that provided the data. This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Numbers U2031202, 12203029 and 11873089. The authors also thank the support of Yunnan Key Laboratory of Solar Physics and Space Science under the Number YNSPCC202208. This work is also supported by the Yunnan Fundamental Research Projects (grant no. 202301AV070007) and the ‘Yunnan Revitalization Talent Support Program’ Innovation Team Project (202405AS350012).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center of Astronomy and Space Sciences, China Three Gorges University, Yichang, 443002, People’s Republic of China

    Rui Zhang, Yan-Qing Chen, Shu-Guang Zeng, Sheng Zheng, Yan-Shan Xiao, Xiang-Yun Zeng & Yao Huang

  2. College of Science, China Three Gorges University, Yichang, 443002, People’s Republic of China

    Rui Zhang, Yan-Qing Chen, Shu-Guang Zeng, Sheng Zheng, Yan-Shan Xiao, Xiang-Yun Zeng & Yao Huang

  3. Yunnan Key Laboratory of the Solar Physics and Space Science, Kunming, 650216, People’s Republic of China

    Rui Zhang

  4. School of Mathematics and Computer Science, Yunnan Minzu University, Kunming, 650504, People’s Republic of China

    Lin-Hua Deng

  5. Yunnan Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, 650216, People’s Republic of China

    Lin-Hua Deng

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  1. Rui Zhang
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Correspondence to Shu-Guang Zeng.

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Zhang, R., Chen, YQ., Zeng, SG. et al. Extreme value theory applied to long-term sunspot areas. J Astrophys Astron 45, 14 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12036-024-09999-3

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