Surveys in Geophysics

, Volume 35, Issue 4, pp 897–912 | Cite as

An Independent Review of Existing Total Solar Irradiance Records

Article
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Abstract

With the advent of space-based total solar irradiance (TSI) observations about 35 years ago, researchers’ understanding of solar variability and its causes has greatly improved. Controversies regarding the cross-calibration of the data from various TSI instruments have resulted in many different TSI composite time series. These composites agree well with each other on timescales ranging from days to years, but due to the limited stability of the instruments contributing to the composites, their quality is not yet sufficient to unambiguously detect possible changes between subsequent cycle minima. In this paper, the construction of the three most prominent TSI composite time series and the underlying TSI models is addressed. The difficulties associated with the cross-calibration of the data are considered, and the viewpoints of the different groups involved in the development of the composites are discussed.

Keywords

Total solar irradiance Solar variability Solar activity 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank R.-M. Bonnet for motivating this work as well as for his advice and support in the course of its development. I would also like to thank C. Fröhlich for the illuminating discussions on the PMOD composite and S. Dewitte for providing the most recent data for the IRMB composite. Special thanks to G. Kopp and the ISSI Team “Assessment of the Accuracies and Uncertainties in the TSI Climate Data Record” for offering me the opportunity to join the discussions of the solar irradiance community. I am grateful for the helpful comments and suggestions made by the referees, one of whom was G. Kopp, during the preparation of this paper, which substantially improved its quality.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.International Space Science InstituteBernSwitzerland
  2. 2.Institute of Theoretical AstrophysicsUniversity of OsloOsloNorway

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