Solar Monitoring has a Past and Present: Does it have a Future?

Abstract

Intrinsic variations of total solar irradiance have, after nearly a century of sustained effort, been demonstrated by flight experiments during solar cycles 21 and 22. This accomplishment has been the result of a collaborative effort on behalf of several groups of researchers in both the United States and Europe. The overriding concern at this point of time is whether the integrity of the precision long-term solar total irradiance database, which began at the maximum of solar cycle 21 and continues in the present, will be lost in the late 1990’s, prior to the inception of experiments planned for the NASA Earth Observing System beginning in 2002. Experiments are not currently in place to prevent an unbridgeable discontinuity in the precision total solar irradiance database.