A New Climate Data Record of Solar Spectral Irradiance from 1610 to Present

Abstract:

We present a climate data record of Solar Spectral Irradiance (SSI), with associated time and wavelength dependent uncertainties, from 1610 to the present. The data record was developed jointly by the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) and the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) as part of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Climate Data Record (CDR) Program, where the data record, source code, and supporting documentation are archived. SSI is constructed from models that determine the changes from quiet Sun conditions arising from bright faculae and dark sunspots on the solar disk using linear regression of proxies of solar magnetic activity with observations from the SOlar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) Spectral Irradiance Monitor (SIM); the measurements are assumed to be reliable on solar rotational time scales. We extend the SSI record to longer time scales by reproducing the integral of the SSI with independent measurements of Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) measurements made by the SORCE Total Irradiance Monitor (TIM); TSI can be separately modeled to within TIM’s measurement accuracy from solar rotational to solar cycle time scales. We discuss the model formulation, uncertainty estimates, and operational implementation and present comparisons of the modeled SSI with the measurement record and with other solar irradiance models. We also discuss future work to improve the Solar Irradiance Climate Data Record with new measurements from the Total and Spectral Solar Irradiance Sensor (TSIS), different proxy representations of sunspot darkening and facular brightening, including the improved composite record of Mg II index being developed as part of the European-led SOlar Irradiance Data exploitation (SOLID) project, and to expand the uncertainty estimates to include model assumptions.