Joint Discussion 8 Solar and stellar activity cycles

Extract

The solar magnetic field and its associated atmospheric activity exhibits periodic variations on a number of time scales. The 11-year sunspot cycle and its underlying 22-year magnetic cycle are, besides the 5-minute oscillation, the most widely known. Amplitudes and periods range from a few parts per million (ppm) and 2–3 minutes for p-modes in sunspots, a few 10 ppm and 10 minutes for the granulation turn around, a few 100 ppm and weeks for the lifetime of plages and faculae, 1000 ppm and 27 days for the rotational signal from spots, to the long-term cycles of 90 yr (Gleissberg cycle), 200 - 300 yr (Wolf, Spörer, Maunder minima), 2,400 yr from ¹⁴C tree-ring data, and possibly in excess of 100,000 yr.