Leamon Robert J, McIntosh Scott W, Marsh Daniel R
Goddard Planetary Heliophysics Institute University of Maryland-Baltimore County Baltimore MD USA.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Code 672 Greenbelt MD USA.
Earth Space Sci. 2021 Apr;8(4):e2020EA001223. doi: 10.1029/2020EA001223. Epub 2021 Apr 2.
The Sun provides the energy required to sustain life on Earth and drive our planet's atmospheric circulation. However, establishing a solid physical connection between solar and tropospheric variability has posed a considerable challenge. The canon of solar variability is derived from the 400 years of observations that demonstrates the waxing and waning number of sunspots over an 11(-ish) year period. Recent research has demonstrated the significance of the underlying 22 years magnetic polarity cycle in establishing the shorter sunspot cycle. Integral to the manifestation of the latter is the spatiotemporal overlapping and migration of oppositely polarized magnetic bands. We demonstrate the impact of "terminators"-the end of Hale magnetic cycles-on the Sun's radiative output and particulate shielding of our atmosphere through the rapid global reconfiguration of solar magnetism. Using direct observation and proxies of solar activity going back some six decades we can, with high statistical significance, demonstrate a correlation between the occurrence of terminators and the largest swings of Earth's oceanic indices: the transition from El Niño to La Niña states of the central Pacific. This empirical relationship is a potential source of increased predictive skill for the understanding of El Niño climate variations, a high-stakes societal imperative given that El Niño impacts lives, property, and economic activity around the globe. A forecast of the Sun's global behavior places the next solar cycle termination in mid-2020; should a major oceanic swing follow, then the challenge becomes: when does correlation become causation and how does the process work?
太阳提供了维持地球生命以及驱动地球大气环流所需的能量。然而，在太阳活动变化与对流层变化之间建立稳固的物理联系一直是一项巨大的挑战。太阳活动变化的规律源自400年的观测，这些观测显示了太阳黑子数量在大约11年的周期内的增减变化。最近的研究表明，在形成较短的太阳黑子周期过程中，潜在的22年磁极性周期具有重要意义。后者表现的一个不可或缺的因素是相反极化磁带的时空重叠和迁移。我们通过太阳磁场的快速全球重新配置，证明了“终结”（即海尔磁周期的结束）对太阳辐射输出以及地球大气微粒屏蔽的影响。利用可追溯到大约六十年前的太阳活动直接观测数据和代理数据，我们能够以很高的统计显著性证明，终结的出现与地球海洋指数的最大波动之间存在关联：即从中太平洋的厄尔尼诺状态向拉尼娜状态的转变。这种经验关系是提高对厄尔尼诺气候变化理解的预测技能的一个潜在来源，鉴于厄尔尼诺影响全球各地的生命、财产和经济活动，这是一项具有重大社会意义的紧迫任务。对太阳全球行为的预测表明，下一次太阳周期终结将在2020年年中；如果随后出现一次重大的海洋波动，那么挑战就变成了：相关性何时变成因果关系，以及这个过程是如何起作用的？
