Long-term persistence of solar activity

Abstract

We examine the question of whether or not the non-periodic variations in solar activity are caused by a white-noise, random process. The Hurst exponent, which characterizes the persistence of a time series, is evaluated for the series of C-14 data for the time interval from about 6000 BC to 1950 AD. We find a constant Hurst exponent, suggesting that solar activity in the frequency range from 100 to 3000 years includes an important continuum component in addition to the well-known periodic variations. The value we calculate, H approximately 0.8, is significantly larger than the value of 0.5 that would correspond to variations produced by a white-noise process. This value is in good agreement with the results for the monthly sunspot data reported elsewhere, indicating that the physics that produces the continuum is a correlated random process and that it is the same type of process over a wide range of time interval lengths.