The making of a new solar spectral irradiance composite - overview of the results from the SOLID Project

Abstract:

Solar spectral irradiance (SSI) is a key driver for the Earth's climate system. To understand in detail the processes at play a consistent SSI time series with realistic uncertainty estimates is needed as input for climate models. However, irradiance observations exist only as numerous and disperse data sets. Also, different SSI instruments show varying instrumental noise and degradation. Due to these effects it is a challenge to build a consistent SSI data set. Within the European Project SOLID we developed tools to derive an objective SSI time series based on existing SSI measurements, complemented with reconstruction models. We present the SOLID SSI composite with a focus on the UV spectral range and compare it with other available SSI reconstructions.