Mechanisms for total and spectral solar irradiance variations
Abstract
The total and spectral irradiance varies over short time scales, i.e. from days to months, and longer time scales from years to decades, centuries, and beyond. In this talk we review the current understanding of irradiance changes from days to decades. We present the current status of observations and discuss proposed reconstruction approaches to understand these variations. The main question that ultimately needs to be answered is what are the physical processes that could explain the enhanced heating of the photosphere, chromosphere, transition region, and corona, leading to a change in the solar radiative output at various wavelengths. As semi-empirical models allow us to reproduce the solar spectrum over a broad wavelength range, they offer a powerful tool to determine the energy necessary to heat certain layers and at the same time balance the radiative losses.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1001.5078,
title = {Mechanisms for total and spectral solar irradiance variations},
author = {M. Haberreiter},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1001.5078},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
to appear in A.G. Kosovichev, A.H. Andrei, and J.-P. Rozelot (Eds), Proceedings IAU Symposium No. 264, 2009, Cambridge University Press, p.231