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What is a solar cycle?

The Solar cycle, also known as the solar magnetic activity cycle, sunspot cycle, or Schwabe cycle, is a periodic 11-year change in the Sun 's activity measured in terms of variations in the number of observed sunspots on the Sun's surface.

Do solar cycles modulate long-term variability?

However, solar cycles are significantly modulated in length, shape and magnitude, from near-spotless grand minima to very active grand maxima. The ≈400-year-long direct sunspot-number series is inhomogeneous in quality and too short to study robust parameters of long-term solar variability.

Is solar activity cyclic?

Solar activity has a cyclic nature with the ≈11-year Schwabe cycle dominating its variability on the interannual timescale. However, solar cycles are significantly modulated in length, shape and magnitude, from near-spotless grand minima to very active grand maxima.

What happens during a solar cycle?

Over the period of a solar cycle, levels of solar radiation and ejection of solar material, the number and size of sunspots, solar flares, and coronal loops all exhibit a synchronized fluctuation from a period of minimum activity to a period of a maximum activity back to a period of minimum activity.

Are solar cycles regular?

The solar cycles are not perfectly regular and vary in length, shape, and strength/intensity, or even can enter periods of almost inactive state, called grand minima of solar activity (e.g., Usoskin 2017).

What causes variations in the solar cycle?

Thus, it is natural to expect that the variations in the solar cycle are caused by some mechanisms in the solar dynamo. Here we identify the causes of the variations in the solar cycle and demonstrate them by presenting results from some illustrative models.