HEPPA Solaris meeting in Leeds, UK

General information and photos

Program of the oral talks

My presentations

  1. Terrestrial temperature, sea level and ENSO index variations linked with solar and volcanic activity view ppt here
  2. Links of eigen vectors of solar magnetic field with the indices of solar activity in sunspots and flares view ppt here

My second talk was attended by Dr. Gavin Schmidt that was a great honour. He asked questions about our index of activity expressed via eigen vectors of the poloidal magnetic field. My answers are summarised below.

We recently published two papers developing further our approach to solar activity index using eigen vectors of solar background magnetic field ((SBMF) poloidal magnetic field) versus averaged sunspot numbers (toroidal magnetic field).

The first paper by Zharkova and Shepherd, 2022, MNRAS  https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/512/4/5085/6552133?login=false. Which you can read on this link https://solargsm.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/zharkova_shepherd_mnras22.pdf

The second paper by Zharkova et aal,  2023, MNRAS https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/521/4/6247/7109272?searchresult=1&login=false  – you can download pdf as we paid for the open source.

The first paper repeated PCA analysis using now SBMF for 4 solar cycles 21-24 and confirmed that we have received the same eigen values and eigen vectors as before. We present the two largest eigen vectors, or principal components, of magnetic dynamo waves produced by dipole magnetic field, which was the same as before in the original paper Zharkova et al, 2015. Also we added another 6 components or three pairs of eigen vectors of magnetic waves produced by quadruple (3-4), sextuple (5-6 and octuple (7-8) magnetic sources and explained these to be responsible for the flaring indices, specifically for the soft X-ray emission index of flares.  

Furthermore, we presented an updated comparison of the modulus summary curve of the two largest eigen  vectors (black curve for dipole magnetic sources)  in Fig. 9 which shows the trend of the behaviour of the poloidal magnetic field versus the toroidal field measured in sunspots (red curve) . As you can see, for every previous cycle 21-24 the black curve shows the general trend  of the background magnetic field behaviour while the sunspot numbers cvary well above our below it because these are magnetic loops with strong magnetic field of about 1 kG.

In the second paper we shown that the both indices show the same periods and the same general trends. We also explained what is the difference between the sunspot index and our SBMF index, because they represent the different magnetic field entities: strong toroidal (sunspots) and weak poloidal (SBMF) magnetic fields.  We presented the simulations of dynamo model showing the difference between these entities and explained that these two are interconnected but not identical ones. The SBMF creates the environments allowing strong magnetic flux tubes to appear of the soar surface or migrate towards thee equator as we discovered in our early paper Zharkov et al, 2008. 

The PCA cannot be further updated as they are defined by the whole magnetic field data from the cycle, so we need to wait when we can add extra cycle. But the paper in 2022 has shown that the eigen values and vectors do not change from adding extra cycle.. Eigen vectors have the same properties of the stable periodicities in magnetic fields like the electro-magnetic waves produced by the electron transitions in hydrogen atoms between the energy levels (1->N+C) described by Schrödinger equation. They are defined by the inter solar structure like hydrogen transitions are defined by the structure of hydrogen atom. It does not matter how many attic wee consider, the structure remains the same.

Why sunspot number change can be underground in terms that these are magnetic flux tubes with strong magnetic field appearing on the solar surface, and the stronger the toroidal field and weaker the background field, the more these tubes would appear. This is observed in cycled 23 and 24 – the deviation of sunspot index is becoming wider, as sunspot numbers in individual months can become higher, if the SBMF (or poloidal magnetic) field becomes weaker.