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Long-term (1749–2015) Variations of Solar UV Spectral Indices

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Abstract

Solar radiation variability spans a wide range in time, ranging from seconds to decadal and longer. The nearly 40 years of measurements of solar irradiance from space established that the total solar irradiance varies by \(\approx 0.1\%\) in phase with the Sun’s magnetic cycle. Specific intervals of the solar spectrum, e.g., ultraviolet (UV), vary by orders of magnitude more. These variations can affect the Earth’s climate in a complex non-linear way. Specifically, some of the processes of interaction between solar UV radiation and the Earth’s atmosphere involve threshold processes and do not require a detailed reconstruction of the solar spectrum. For this reason a spectral UV index based on the (FUV-MUV) color has been recently introduced. This color is calculated using SORCE SOLSTICE integrated fluxes in the FUV and MUV bands. We present in this work the reconstructions of the solar (FUV-MUV) color and Ca ii K and Mg ii indices, from 1749–2015, using a semi-empirical approach based on the reconstruction of the area coverage of different solar magnetic features, i.e., sunspot, faculae and network. We remark that our results are in noteworthy agreement with latest solar UV proxy reconstructions that exploit more sophisticated techniques requiring historical full-disk observations. This makes us confident that our technique can represent an alternative approach which can complement classical solar reconstruction efforts. Moreover, this technique, based on broad-band observations, can be utilized to estimate the activity on Sun-like stars, that cannot be resolved spatially, hosting extra-solar planetary systems.

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Notes

  1. Actually, a correct determination of the ozone concentration with the atmospheric altitude based on the Chapman theory alone cannot explain the observed distribution of ozone. A detailed calculation requires the inclusion of the rates of photochemical reactions with temperature, a radiative transfer model for terrestrial atmosphere, and the \(\mathrm{NO}_{\mathrm{x}}\) catalytic cycles modulated by solar magnetic activity via solar energetic particles and cosmic rays modulation.

  2. The NSO Ca ii K emission index is available at: http://gong.nso.edu/data/magmap.

  3. The World Data Center SILSO (Sunspot Index and Long-term Solar Observations), Royal Observatory of Belgium, Brussels, data can be found at: http://sidc.be/silso/datafiles.

  4. The facular area coverage obtained from the PSPT are available at: http://lasp.colorado.edu/pspt_access.

  5. The plage composite from 1893 to 2015 is available at: http://www2.mps.mpg.de/projects/sun-climate/data.

  6. The sunspot area is available at SFO, a solar research facility associated with the California State University: http://www.csun.edu/SanFernandoObservatory/photoindex.html.

  7. The SPRM model is available at: http://lasp.colorado.edu/pspt_access.

  8. The sunspot area composite is available at: http://www2.mps.mpg.de/projects/sun-climate/data.html.

  9. The Kurucz website is available at http://kurucz.harvard.edu/.

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Acknowledgements

The National Solar Observatory is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA), under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. The Time series of the Ca ii K uses SOLIS data obtained by the NSO Integrated Synoptic Program (NISP), managed by the National Solar Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Inc. under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation downloaded from the SOLIS website (https://solis.nso.edu/0/iss/). The following institutes are acknowledged for providing the data: Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (Boulder, CO) for SORCE SOLSTICE SSI data (http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/sorce/data/) and University of Bremen (Bremen, Germany) for Mg ii index data (http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de/gome/gomemgii.html). This work was partially supported by Italian MIUR-PRIN grant 2017 “on Circumterrestrial Environment: Impact of Sun–Earth Interaction” and the Joint Research PhD Program in “Astronomy, Astrophysics and Space Science” between the universities of Roma Tor Vergata, Roma Sapienza and INAF.

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  1. Physics Department, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Via Ricerca Scientifica, 1, 00133, Rome, Italy

    Francesco Berrilli, Valentina Penza & Mija Lovric

  2. National Solar Observatory, 3665 Discovery Dr., Boulder, CO, 80303, USA

    Serena Criscuoli

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  1. Francesco Berrilli
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Irradiance Variations of the Sun and Sun-like Stars

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Berrilli, F., Criscuoli, S., Penza, V. et al. Long-term (1749–2015) Variations of Solar UV Spectral Indices. Sol Phys 295, 38 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-020-01603-5

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