Increase in the response of the Earth's atmosphere to the sunspot cycle with height above sea level

✍ Scribed by H. Schwentek; W. Elling

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1981
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 947 KB
• Volume: 74
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0038-0938
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00154523

✦ Synopsis

The average, longterm behaviour of many parameters P of the Earth's atmosphere and ionosphere depends on the solar activity cycle. In many cases it can be roughly described by a linear approximation of the form P = P0(1 + kR), where for example, P is electron density of the ionosphere or stratospheric temperature, and so on; R is an average sunspot number; k indirectly gives the response of particular constituents of the Earth's atmosphere above the tropopause to the corresponding region(s) of the solar wave spectrum. It is shown that this response coefficient k considerably depends on season, and also slightly on the hemisphere considered and on geographic latitude, and that it increases by orders of magnitude with height above the sea level. The coefficient k is greatest for the F region of the ionosphere; it is still significant for stratospheric temperatures, but mainly during winter, and it becomes slightly negative for tropospheric temperatures. * Proceedings of the 14th ESLAB Symposium on Physics of Solar Variations, 16-