Abstract
We study and compare characteristics of the sunspot group latitude distribution in two catalogs: extended Greenwich (1874–2014) and Schwabe (1825–1867) (Arlt et al., 2013). We show that both datasets reveal similar correlations between the latitude and amplitude characteristics of the 11-year cycle: the latitude dispersion correlates with the current activity and the sunspot mean latitude at the cycle’s maximum is proportional to its amplitude. This agrees with the conclusions drawn in (Ivanov et al., 2011; Ivanov and Miletsky, 2014) for the Greenwich catalog. We show that the latitude properties of the sunspot distribution are much more tolerant to gaps in observational data than traditional amplitude indices of activity. Therefore, the discovered correlations can be used for estimation of the observation quality and independent normalization of the activity levels in spotty pre-Greenwich data. We exemplified this using the Schwabe catalog. In addition, we show that the first part of the Schwabe data probably contains errors in sunspot latitudes, which lead to overestimation of the sunspot latitude dispersions.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Arlt, R., The butterfly diagram in the eighteenth century, Sol. Phys., 2009, vol. 255, pp. 143–153.
Arlt, R., Leussu, R., Giese, N., Mursula, K., and Usoskin, I.G., Sunspot positions and sizes for 1825–1867 from the observations by Samuel Heinrich Schwabe, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc., 2013, vol. 433, no. 4, pp. 3165–3172.
Hoyt, D.V. and Schatten, K.H., Group sunspot numbers: A new solar activity reconstruction, Sol. Phys., 1998, vol. 179, pp. 189–219.
Ivanov, V.G. and Miletsky, E.V., Width of sunspot generating zone and reconstruction of butterfly diagram, Sol. Phys., 2011, vol. 268, pp. 231–242.
Ivanov, V.G. and Miletsky, E.V., Spörer’s law and relationship between the latitude and amplitude parameters of solar activity, Geomagn. Aeron. (Engl. Transl.), 2014, vol. 54, no. 7, pp. 907–915.
Ivanov, V.G., Miletsky, E.V., and Nagovotsyn, Yu.A., Form of the latitude distribution of sunspot activity, Astron. Rep., 2011, vol. 55, no. 10, pp. 911–917.
Miletsky, E.V. and Ivanov, V.G., Latitude characteristics of the sunspot formation zone and the 11-year solar activity cycle, Astron. Rep., 2009, vol. 53, no. 9, pp. 857–862.
Vitinskii, Yu.I., Kopetskii, M., and Kuklin, G.V., Statistika pyatnoobrazovatel’noi deyatel’nosti Solntsa (Statistics of Solar Spot Generation Activity), Moscow: Nauka, 1986.
Waldmeier, M., Neue Eigenschaften der Sonnenfleckenkurve, Astron. Mitt. Eidg. Sternwarte Zürich, 1935, vol. 14, pp. 105–130.
Waldmeier, M., Die Zonenwanderung der Sonnenflecken, Astron. Mitt. Eidg. Sternwarte Zürich, 1939, vol. 14, pp. 470–481.
Waldmeier, M., Ergebnisse und Probleme der Sonnenforschung, Leipzig: Geest und Portig, 1955.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ivanov, V.G., Miletsky, E.V. Characteristics of sunspot longitudinal distribution and their correlation with solar activity in pre-Greenwich data. Geomagn. Aeron. 56, 848–852 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0016793216070082
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S0016793216070082