A "Toy" Simulation of Total Solar Irradiance Variations

Physics

Scientific paper

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7536 Solar Activity Cycle (2162), 7538 Solar Irradiance

Scientific paper

Recently, we have developed a method for deducing the total solar irradiance S from sunspot area AS using a finite impulse response FIR which, when convolved with AS, produces S (Preminger & Walton 2005, JGR, submitted). In an effort to gain physical insight into the meaning of the FIR, we have produced a simple model of the solar cycle with the following characteristics: (1) nd sunspots per day are generated, each with a fixed area AS = 500 millionths of the solar hemisphere; (2) sunspots decay exponentially with time constant τS = 10 days; (3) decayed sunspot area becomes faculae, which in turn decay with a time constant τF = 45 days. These parameters were deduced from various characteristics of the actual solar cycle. Each sunspot is generated at a random solar longitude, and the faculae remain at the same longitude as the sunspots. Latitude variation is not modeled; that is, they are always zero. We allow nd to vary as a simple cosine bell from 0 up to nd,max. Simple models of sunspot and facular contrast are used to compute a pseudo-TSI. When nd,max=1, the resulting model reproduces a few of the observed characteristics of the solar activity cycle; e.g., the projected sunspot and facular area peak at about 1500 and 45,000 parts per million of the solar disk. If we use this simple model to compute a FIR, it has a very similar shape to the one found empirically from the actual measured S and AS. The model FIR is also independent of nd,max over the range 0.1 to 10. It is missing some qualitatively important characteristics, however, in particular the fact that S actually begins to rise some time before AS; we are investigating refinements to our model which might reproduce this property of the empirical FIR.

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