Related papers: Uncertainty quantification in sunspot counts
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…
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…
Our knowledge of the long-term evolution of solar activity and of its primary modulation, the 11-year cycle, largely depends on a single direct observational record: the visual sunspot counts that retrace the last 4 centuries, since the…
The relative number of sunspots represents the longest evidence describing the level of solar activity. As such, its use goes beyond solar physics, e.g. towards climate research. The construction of a single representative series is a…
Recent research has demonstrated that the number of sunspots per group ('active region') has been decreasing over the last two or three solar cycles and that the classical Relative Sunspot Number (SSN) no longer is a good representation of…
Group sunspot number (GSN) series constitute the longest instrumental astronomical database providing information on solar activity. It is a compilation of observations by many individual observers, and their inter-calibration has usually…
The solar program of the Astronomical Observatory of Madrid started in 1876. For ten solar cycles, observations were made in this institution to determine sunspot numbers and areas. The program was completed in 1986. The resulting data have…
The use of the spotless days to predict the future solar activity is here revised based on the new version of the sunspot number index with a 24-month filter. Data from Solar Cycle (SC) 10 are considered because from this solar cycle the…
The Sunspot Number, created by R.Wolf in 1849, provides a direct long-term record of solar activity from 1700 to the present. In spite of its central role in multiple studies of the solar dynamo and of the past Sun-Earth relations, it was…
Sunspot groups often emerge in spatial-temporal clusters, known as nests or complexes of activity. Quantifying how frequently such nesting occurs is important for understanding the organisation and recurrence of solar magnetic fields. We…
Sunspot numbers are important tracers of historical solar activity. They are important in the prediction of oncoming solar maximum, in the design of lifetimes of space assets, and in assessing the extent of solar-radiation impact on the…
We use 5 test data series to quantify putative discontinuities around 1946 in 5 annual-mean sunspot number or group number sequences. The series tested are: the original and new versions of the Wolf/Zurich/International sunspot number…
Sunspots are the most important indicator of the magnetic activity on the solar surface during a cycle. Every sunspot group is formed and shaped by the magnetic field of the Sun. Hence, the magnetic field intensity shows itself as the size…
We have reconstructed the sunspot group count, not by comparisons with other reconstructions and correcting those where they were deemed to be deficient, but by a re-assessment of original sources. The resulting series is a pure solar index…
The activity-related variations in the solar acoustic frequencies have been known for 30 years. However, the importance of the different contributions is still not well established. With this in mind, we developed an empirical model to…
Recent work on improving and revising estimates of solar activity [Clette et al., 2014] has resulted in renewed interest in what has been called the longest running 'Science Experiment'. We compare four reconstructions of solar activity as…
The sunspots and other solar activity indicators tend to cluster on the surface of the Sun.These clusters very often occur at certain longitudes that persist in time.It is of general interest to find new and simple ways to characterize the…
The historical record of sunspot areas is a valuable and widely used proxy of solar activity and variability. The Royal Greenwich Observatory (RGO) regularly measured this and other parameters between 1874 and 1976. After that time records…
We compare four sunspot-number data sequences against geomagnetic and terrestrial auroral observations. The comparisons are made for the original SIDC composite of Wolf-Zurich-International sunspot number [$R_{ISNv1}$], the group sunspot…
Although the sunspot-number series have existed since the mid-19th century, they are still the subject of intense debate, with the largest uncertainty being related to the "calibration" of the visual acuity of individual observers in the…