Telescopes Built in Brazil Investigate the Relationship Between Solar Cycles and Climate

Hello reader!

It follows an article published today (08/06) in the english website of the Agência FAPESP noting that telescopes built in Brazil investigate the relationship between Solar Cycles and Climate.

Duda Falcão

Articles

Telescopes Built in Brazil Investigate the

Relationship Between Solar Cycles and Climate

By Diego Freire

August 6, 2014

(photo provided by the researcher)

Equipment will be synchronized to

constantly monitor solar activity and

record information that may be

associated with climate change.

Agência FAPESP – Researchers at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and Federal Fluminense University (UFF) have built two telescopes that will operate in a synchronized fashion to constantly monitor particles derived from solar radiation to study possible relationships between solar cycles and climate change on Earth.

The work is the result of the study titled “Detection and study of transient solar events and climate change,” carried out under a cooperative agreement between FAPESP and the Carlos Chagas Filho Foundation for Research Support in the state of Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ). The collaboration is designed to support cooperative projects and exchanges of researchers and students in fields associated with global climate change.

According to UNICAMP research coordinator Anderson Campos Fauth, an associate professor at the Gleb Wataghin Physics Institute, scientists already know that solar cycles and their fluctuations are related in some way to the intensity of the cosmic rays that reach the Earth, even though solar cycles have not been viewed as one of the principal causes of global climate change.

“There is no consensus as to the mechanisms that relate solar activity to climate change. There is one hypothesis that states that the increase in the flow of cosmic rays may be associated with the appearance of low clouds, which have a global cooling effect and that in the polar regions, where the incidence of solar radiation is low, the impact is just the opposite, causing warming,” Fauth said.

He explains that scientists have observed that certain climate phenomena, such as warmer oceans, more tropical rains, fewer subtropical clouds, and more intense wind circulation, seem, to some extent, to be associated with the cycle of solar activity, which has an average period of 11 years.

“However,” he added, “these studies are in their initial phase, and new observations of radiation emitted by the Sun need to be done to monitor the seasonal variations, especially during the occurrence of solar flares.”

As a consequence, the work of UNICAMP and UFF with telescopes focuses on signs associated with the solar cycle: the presence and behavior of muon particles in the Earth’s atmosphere.

A muon is the most abundant electrically charged particle on Earth, representing nearly 80% of the cosmic rays with an electric charge at altitudes near sea level. Every second, approximately 140 muons arrive per square meter of the Earth’s surface.

Because the muon nearly always travels in a straight line, it is easily detected with an arrangement of a few detectors. “These particles allow us to study solar events in an energy region that satellites and neutron monitors positioned on the Earth’s surface do not observe,” Fauth explained.

For the UNICAMP and UFF telescopes, 2014 has been a good year for detecting muons. The current solar cycle is reaching peak activity: the number of sunspots observed is increasing considerably, and solar flares – explosions that occur on the Sun’s surface – are erupting with great intensity, releasing millions of tons of magnetized gas.

In addition, Campinas and Niterói, where the telescopes are installed, are fruitful locations for detecting solar radiation particles because they are near the central region of the South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly (SAA), where the magnetic cutoff rigidity for charged particles from outer space is very low.

Most solar-powered particle detectors are installed near the polar regions because elsewhere Earth’s magnetic field would divert the charged particles. In the SAA region, however, the magnetic intensity is much lower as the result of a “hole” in the magnetosphere that behaves like a funnel.

Muonca

The telescope built at UNICAMP, called Muonca, began to record continuous data in April utilizing four particle detectors. The UFF detectors began operation in June, in monitor mode, in which the muons are counted but the direction from which they arrive is not detected.

Muonca uses four identical particle detectors., When a muon crosses the scintillation detector, it produces a flash of light that allows its passage to be recorded. A computer is used in the data-acquisition system, and the raw data are recorded in daily files.

The UNICAMP telescope was built in two years, which included the processing time involved in importation, carrying out the projects, technical design of the components, work by university and corporate specialists, assembly by members of the research group, development of data-acquisition software and calibration of the detectors, and programming the software for data analysis.

The telescopes operate continuously, 24 hours a day, and the researchers are developing a system that sends email and text alerts in the event of a problem or solar event that would affect data collection.

Recently, the detectors installed in Campinas and Niteroi simultaneously recorded a geomagnetic storm. According to Fauth, the data are being analyzed for publication, and the initial joint findings by the two telescopes will be presented in September at the 34th National Meeting of Particle and Field Theory Physics, organized by the Brazilian Physics Society in Caxambu (MG).

Source: English WebSite of the Agência FAPESP