Understanding Space Weather: The Sun as a Variable Star

Abstract

can Meteorological Society has recently adopted space weather as a new core competency. This is the first in a series of papers discussing the multidisciplinary aspects of space weather. This paper concerns the physics behind solar variability, the driver of space weather. We follow the tortuous journey of the energy from its production in the solar core until it escapes into interplanetary space, showing how the internal dynamics and structure of the Sun change its nature. We show how the production and dissipation of magnetic fields are a key clue to untangling the riddle of the sunspot cycle and how that, in turn, affects the amount of radiation that the Earth receives from the Sun?the total solar irradiance.