UV low during recent solar minimum

From the American Geophysical Union:

Ultraviolet solar irradiance was low during recent solar minimum

Solar irradiance, which varies with the 11-year solar cycle and on longer time scales, can affect temperature and winds in the atmosphere, influencing Earth’s climate. As the Sun currently wakes up from a period of low sunspot activity, researchers want to know how irradiance during the recent solar minimum compares to historical levels. In addition to understanding the total received power, it is important to know how various spectral bands behave, in particular the ultraviolet, which causes heating and winds in the stratosphere.

Lockwood analyzes solar ultraviolet spectral irradiance data from May 2003 to August 2005 from both the Solar Ultraviolet Spectral Irradiance Monitor (SUSIM) instrument on board the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) and the Solar Stellar Irradiance Comparison Experiment (SOLSTICE) instrument on the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) satellite. Using several different methods to intercalibrate the data, he develops a data composite that can be used to determine differences between the recent solar minimum and previous minima. He finds that solar irradiance during the recent sunspot minimum has been especially low.

Source: Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, doi:10.1029/2010JD014746, 2011 http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2010JD014746

Title: Was UV spectral solar irradiance lower during the recent low sunspot minimum?

Authors: Mike Lockwood: Space Environment Physics Group, Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, Reading, Berkshire, UK; and Space Science and Technology Department, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Didcot, Oxfordshire, UK.

Abstract:

A detailed analysis is presented of solar UV spectral irradiance for the period between May 2003 and August 2005, when data are available from both the Solar Ultraviolet Spectral Irradiance Monitor (SUSIM) instrument (on board the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) spacecraft) and the Solar Stellar Irradiance Comparison Experiment (SOLSTICE) instrument (on board the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) satellite). The ultimate aim is to develop a data composite that can be used to accurately determine any differences between the “exceptional” solar minimum at the end of solar cycle 23 and the previous minimum at the end of solar cycle 22 without having to rely on proxy data to set the long-term change. SUSIM data are studied because they are the only data available in the “SOLSTICE gap” between the end of available UARS SOLSTICE data and the start of the SORCE data. At any one wavelength the two data sets are considered too dissimilar to be combined into a meaningful composite if any one of three correlations does not exceed a threshold of 0.8. This criterion removes all wavelengths except those in a small range between 156 nm and 208 nm, the longer wavelengths of which influence ozone production and heating in the lower stratosphere. Eight different methods are employed to intercalibrate the two data sequences. All methods give smaller changes between the minima than are seen when the data are not adjusted; however, correcting the SUSIM data to allow for an exponentially decaying offset drift gives a composite that is largely consistent with the unadjusted data from the SOLSTICE instruments on both UARS and SORCE and in which the recent minimum is consistently lower in the wave band studied.