Related papers: Updating the Historical Sunspot Record
Solar activity is an important driver of long-term climate trends and must be accounted for in climate models. Unfortunately, direct measurements of this quantity over long periods do not exist. The only observation related to solar…
Relative variations in the number of sunspots and sunspot groups in activity cycles have been analyzed based on data from the Kislovodsk Mountain Astronomical Station and international indices. The following regularities have been…
Samuel Heinrich Schwabe made 8486 drawings of the solar disk with sunspots in the period from November 5, 1825 to December 29, 1867. We have measured sunspot sizes and heliographic positions on digitized images of these drawings. A total of…
Reliable historical records of total solar irradiance (TSI) are needed for climate change attribution and research to assess the extent to which long-term variations in the Sun's radiant energy incident on the Earth may exacerbate (or…
Monthly averages of the sunspot number visible on the sun, observed from 1749, Zurich Observatory, and from 1848 other observatories, have been analyzed. This time signal presents a frequency power spectra with a clear $1/f^\alpha$ behavior…
The linear relationship between the maximum amplitudes (R$_{max}$) of sunspot cycles and preceding minima (R$_{min}$) is one of the precursor methods used to predict the amplitude of the upcoming solar cycle. In the recent past this method…
The original sunspot observations by Heinrich Samuel Schwabe of 1825-1867 were digitized and a first subset of spots was measured. In this initial project, we determined more than 14 000 sunspot positions and areas comprising about 11% of…
We present a few newly found old sunspot observations from the years AD 1708, 1709, and 1710, which were obtained by Peter Becker from Rostock, Germany. For 1709, Becker gave a detailed drawing: he observed a sunspot group made up of two…
We discuss recent papers very critical of our Group Sunspot Number Series (Svalgaard & Schatten [2016]). Unfortunately, we cannot support any of the concerns they raise. We first show that almost always there is simple proportionality…
We use the historic record of sunspot groups compiled by the Royal Greenwich Observatory together with the sunspot number to derive the statistical properties of sunspot group emergence in dependence of cycle phase and strength. In…
We could infer a secular decreasing trend in the poloidal to toroidal solar magnetic flux amplification factor ( Af) using geomagnetic observations ( classic and IHV corrected aa indices) during the sunspot cycles 9-23. A similar decreasing…
William Cranch Bond, director of the Harvard College Observatory in mid-19th century, carried out detailed sunspot observations during the period 1847-1849. We highlight Bond was the observer with the highest daily number of sunspot groups…
Sunspot number series are subject to various uncertainties, which are still poorly known. The need for their better understanding was recently highlighted by the major makeover of the international Sunspot Number [Clette et al., Space…
Most of our knowledge about the Sun's activity cycle arises from sunspot observations over the last centuries since telescopes have been used for astronomy. The German astronomer Gustav Sp\"orer observed almost daily the Sun from 1861 until…
In 1981, the production of the international Sunspot Number moved from the Z\"{u}rich Observatory to the Royal Observatory of Belgium, marking a very important transition in the history of the Sunspot Number. Those recent decades are…
Much of our knowledge about the solar dynamo is based on sunspot observations. It is thus desirable to extend the set of positional and morphological data of sunspots into the past. Gustav Sp\"orer observed in Germany from Anklam…
Catalogues of sunspots have been available with useful information about sunspots or sunspot groups for approximately the last 150 years. However, the task of merging these catalogues is not simple. In this paper, a method is suggested of…
We discuss two aspects of the Waldmeier Effect, namely (1) the rise times of sunspot cycles are anti-correlated to their strengths (WE1) and (2) the rates of rise of the cycles are correlated to their strengths (WE2). From analysis of four…
One of the most striking aspects of the 11-year sunspot cycle is that there have been times in the past when some cycles went missing, a most well-known example of this being the Maunder minimum during 1645-1715. Analyses of cosmogenic…
The minimum - maximum method, belonging to the precursor class of the solar activity forecasting methods, is based on a linear relationship between relative sunspot number in the minimum and maximum epochs of solar cycles. In the present…