Recuperación y análisis de datos de actividad solar de los últimos cuatro siglos

Abstract

The Sun is our main source of energy and, therefore, it is the most important natural driver of the climate of our planet. Thus, the historical reconstruction of solar activity is a key element to understand the behavior of our star and therefore its relationship with the Earth's climate. In the historical documentary sources, we dispose of information corresponding to solar activity of the past which have not yet been digitalized or analyzed and it can help to that knowledge. The aim of this Doctoral Thesis is to recover and analyze data about solar activity over the past four centuries. In this work, we present an important set of sunspot series previously unavailable. Some of these series contain new information corresponding to the Maunder Minimum (a period of very low solar activity from 1645 to 1715) in order to clarify the controversy about the real level of solar activity during this period. The indices used to measure solar activity show some discrepancies, mainly in the historical part. Therefore, it has recently carried out a series of workshops with the aim of correcting those discrepancies and reach to a consensus about the new solar activity indices and the new database that should be used. The results obtained in this Doctoral Thesis have been of great interest to the international scientific community due to they have greatly contributed to this improvement.