Research Article

Space climate and space weather over the past 400 years: 1. The power input to the magnetosphere

Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, Earley Gate, Reading RG6 6BB, UK

^* Corresponding author: m.lockwood@reading.ac.uk

Received: 4 June 2017
Accepted: 16 August 2017

Abstract

Using information on geomagnetic activity, sunspot numbers and cosmogenic isotopes, supported by historic eclipse images and in conjunction with models, it has been possible to reconstruct annual means of solar wind speed and number density and heliospheric magnetic field (HMF) intensity since 1611, when telescopic observations of sunspots began. These models are developed and tuned using data recorded by near-Earth interplanetary spacecraft and by solar magnetograms over the past 53 years. In this paper, we use these reconstructions to quantify power input into the magnetosphere over the past 400 years. For each year, both the annual mean power input is computed and its distribution in daily means. This is possible because the distribution of daily values divided by the annual mean is shown to maintain the same lognormal form with a constant variance. This study is another important step towards the development of a physics-based, long-term climatology of space weather conditions.