A Discussion of Implausible Total Solar-Irradiance Variations Since 1700

Abstract

AbstractThe Sun plays a role in influencing Earth’s climate, making it important to have accurate information about variations in the Sun’s radiative output. Models are used to recover total solar-irradiance (TSI) variations in the past when direct space-based measurements are not available. One of the most cryptic such TSI reconstructions is the one by Hoyt and Schatten (J. Geophys. Res. 98, 18, 1993, HS93). The rather vague description of the model methodology, the arbitrary selection of solar indices it employs, and the short overlap between the HS93 series and directly measured TSI values has hindered any evaluation of the performance of this model to this day. Here, we aim at rectifying this by updating the HS93 model with new input data. In this way we are also contributing in the discussion on the possible long-term changes in solar irradiance.We find that the analysis by HS93 included a number of erroneous processing steps that led to an artificial increasing trend towards the end of the reconstructed TSI series as well as shifting the peak of the TSI in the mid-twentieth century back in time by about 11 years. Furthermore, by using direct measurements of the TSI we determined that the free parameter of the model, the magnitude of variations (here defined as percentage variations of the difference between the maximum to minimum values), is optimal when it is minimised (being ≤0.05%). This is in stark contrast to the high magnitude of variations, of 0.25%, that was imposed by HS93. However, our result is consistent with more recent estimates, such as those from the Spectral And Total Irradiance REconstruction (SATIRE) model and Naval Research Laboratory TSI (NRLTSI), which were used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Overall, we find that the previously reported agreement of the HS93 TSI series to temperature on Earth was purely due to improper analysis and artefacts of the processing.