A doubling of the sun's coronal magnetic field during the last 100 years

Lockwood, M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7397-2172, Stamper, R. and Wild, M. N. (1999) A doubling of the sun's coronal magnetic field during the last 100 years. Nature, 399 (6735). pp. 437-439. ISSN 0028-0836 doi: 10.1038/20867

Abstract/Summary

The solar wind is an extended ionized gas of very high electrical conductivity, and therefore drags some magnetic flux out of the Sun to fill the heliosphere with a weak interplanetary magnetic field(1,2). Magnetic reconnection-the merging of oppositely directed magnetic fields-between the interplanetary field and the Earth's magnetic field allows energy from the solar wind to enter the near-Earth environment. The Sun's properties, such as its luminosity, are related to its magnetic field, although the connections are still not well understood(3,4). Moreover, changes in the heliospheric magnetic field have been linked with changes in total cloud cover over the Earth, which may influence global climate(5), Here we show that measurements of the near-Earth interplanetary magnetic field reveal that the total magnetic flux leaving the Sun has risen by a factor of 1.4 since 1964: surrogate measurements of the interplanetary magnetic field indicate that the increase since 1901 has been by a factor of 2,3, This increase may be related to chaotic changes in the dynamo that generates the solar magnetic field. We do not yet know quantitatively how such changes will influence the global environment.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/38751
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	No Reading authors. Back catalogue items Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	Nature Publishing Group
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