Climate and paleoclimate: What we can learn about solar luminosity variations

The Earth's climate is not constant, and has experienced major changes in the past on all timescales. The causes of these changes, although still incompletely understood, vary according to the timescale considered. Some of the most important causal mechanisms include continental drift, changes in the Earth's orbital parameters, volcanic activity and solar variations. Solar variations have been invoked to explain climatic change on almost all timescales from 1 to 10⁹ yr. Unfortunately, even though the Sun is a prime candidate for explaining many changes in past climate, the use of past climate as a proxy for solar luminosity changes is fraught with difficulty. For example:

1. In many cases observed changes in climate can be adequately explained without recourse to solar variations as a causal factor. In fact, on the longest timescales the Earth's climate was remarkably similar to today in spite of a considerably lower solar output.
2. For most timescales of climatic change there are, as yet, no plausible theories giving similar timescale variations in solar activity, so that a vital link between cause and effect is missing.
3. There are considerable uncertainties in the record of past climates.
4. On short timescales many proposed solar activity-climate links have failed to stand up to rigorous statistical analysis.

This paper reviews past changes in climate and proposed causal mechanisms on timescales of from 1 to 10⁹ yr. The evidence for solar activity-climate links is discussed with special reference to the above points.     

On convection in stellar atmospheres far from local thermodynamic equilibrium

Non-thermal effects generated by sub-photospheric convection are considered. It is shown that convective cells are destroyed by shocks generated when convective velocities reach the speed of sound. Terminologically this process is given the name of sonic-boom-interrupted convection. An estimate is made on the dependence of convective velocities on stellar parameters. It is suggested that the process being investigated could explain why some stars do not belong to any branch of the theoretical Hertzsprung-Russell diagram.     

The spectra and light curves of two gamma-ray bursts

During the last half of 1977 the UCSD/MIT Hard X-Ray and Low Energy Gamma-Ray Experiment of HEAO-1 observed two of the three gamma-ray bursts detected by at least three satellites. The first of these bursts (20 October, 1977) had a fluence of (3.1±0.5)×10^–5 erg cm^–2 integrated over the energy range 0.135–2.05 MeV and over its duration of 38.7 s, placing it among the largest bursts observed. The second (10 November, 1977) had a fluence of (2.1±0.8)×10^–5 erg cm^–2 integrated over the energy range 0.125–3 MeV and over its duration of 2.8 s. The light curves of both bursts exhibit time fluctuations down to the limiting time resolution of the detectors (0.1 s). The spectrum of the 20 October, 1977 burst can be fitted with a power law (index –1.93±0.16), which is harder than other reported gamma-ray burst spectral fits. This burst was detected up to 2.05 MeV, and approximately half of its energy was emitted at photon energies above 0.5 MeV. The spectrum of the 10 November, 1977 burst is softer (index –2.4±0.7) and is similar to the spectrum of the 27 April, 1972 burst.Paper presented at the Symposium on Cosmic Gamma-Ray Bursts held at Toulouse, France, 26–29 November, 1979.     

Second species solutions with an 0(μ v ), 0<v<1, near-Moon passage

This paper illustrates the application of the theory for second species solutions with an 0( ^v ), 0<v<1, near-Moon passage to first species-second species bifurcations and to second species-second species bifurcations. It also corrects and improves the asymptotic approximations obtained in the author's previous work on this subject and it establishes a local form of Broucke's Principle for the types of bifurcations studied in this paper.This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant MCS 7703591.     

The strength of the Sun's polar fields

The magnetic field strength within the polar caps of the Sun is an important parameter for both the solar activity cycle and for our understanding of the interplanetary magnetic field. Measurements of the line-of-sight component of the magnetic field generally yield 0.1 to 0.2 mT near times of sunspot minimum. In this paper we report measurements of the polar fields made at the Stanford Solar Observatory using the Fe i line 525.02 nm. We find that the average flux density poleward of 55° latitude is about 0.6 mT peaking to more than 1 mT at the pole and decreasing to 0.2 mT at the polar cap boundary. The total open flux through either polar cap thus becomes about 3 × 10¹⁴ Wb. We also show that observed magnetic field strengths vary as the line-of-sight component of nearly radial fields.     

The center-to-limb behavior of Ca i λ6573 and [Ca ii] λ7324

Center-to-limb measurements of the Ca i 6573 intercombination line and the Ca ii 7324 forbidden line are compared with synthetic profiles based on a simple representation of the non-LTE Ca-Ca⁺ ionization equilibrium. The effects of photoionizations from low lying excited states of neutral calcium are found to reduce the sensitivity of the 6573 center-to-limb behavior as a thermal structure diagnostic. The synthetic center-to-limb behavior is also sensitive to uncertainties in the nonthermal broadening. Nevertheless, the measured center-to-limb behavior of 6573 favors a cool photospheric model similar to the Vernazza, Avrett, and Loeser model M over hotter models based on the Ca ii K wings. The non-LTE calcium abundance obtained from the disk center equivalent widths of 6573 and 7324 using the best fit model is A _Ca2.1±0.2 × 10^-6 (by number relative to hydrogen). Applications of these lines as diagnostics of the Ca-Ca⁺ ionization equilibrium in other stars are briefly discussed.Visiting Astronomer, Kitt Peak National Observatory.Operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under contract with the National Science Foundation.     

The evolution of massive close binaries

The results of evolutionary computations for massive binary systems (initial masses of the primary 10M ) with mass ratios between 0.3 and 0.8 are summarized and compared with observations in order to verify how far one can go with the conservative assumption of mass exchange. It is found that conservative mass exchange leads to acceptable first-order models of W-R and massive X-ray binaries. However, the comparison between this theory and observation reveals that for the observed systems (W-R and X-ray binaries) a preference exists for low intial mass ratios; moreover, the X-ray luminosities of the theoretical models are systematically too low, though this may be due to the adopted wind model. In addition, the influences of several parameters (distance between the components, chemical composition, primary mass, mass ratio and atmosphere) are examined. These parameters influence the remnant mass and any further evolution only marginally. Attention is also given to the effect on the system parameters of a supernova explosion of the remnant of the mass-losing component. For a large range of systems a disruption probability smaller than 25% is found.     

Fair weather and storm sand transport on the Long Island, New York, inner shelf

Both spring-summer and fall-winter sand transport have been observed on the Long Island, New York, inner shelf at water depths of 20-22 m using a radio-isotope sand tracer system. The extent of dispersal of the tagged, fine sand was measured at 3 week intervals in two 70 day experiments. In the late spring and early summer, movement was primarily diffusive in nature, extending 100 m around the line of tracer injection, while late fall-winter patterns had strong advective features, including an ellipsoidal outline extending approximately 1500 m westward of the injection points after the passage of several storms with strong northeasterly winds. Near-bottom current observations made with Savonius rotor sensors identify the event responsible for the bulk of the transport over the 135 day observation period as a storm flow of 2 days duration. Tracer and current observations together suggest that westward winter storm flow along the Long Island shelf is the major mechanism of sand transport at these depths on a yearly time scale. A least-squares fit of several of the observed winter patterns with a plume model yields average sediment mass flux lower bounds of 3.2 × 10^?3 gm/cm/sec and 1.7 × 10^?1 gm/cm/sec for ‘typical’ and extreme winter storm activity.