Evaluation of the 900‐Year European Auroral Records With Extreme Value Theory

Abstract

AbstractAn explicit proxy of solar activity on the Earth is the auroral displays. The auroral oval can extend to lower latitudes during geomagnetic storms triggered by explosive solar activities. The lower the latitude of auroral oval is, the stronger the solar activity is. Systematic auroral records in Europe (mainly central Europe with geomagnetic latitude lower than 55°) can be dated back to 1000 AD and can be used to manifest solar activity in the past millennium. However, the temporal distribution of the 6,262 auroral records during 1000 and 1900 AD is seriously uneven, with 85.6% of the records appeared after 1700 AD. Here we use the extreme value theory (EVT) to evaluate the effectiveness of characterizing the solar activity with the auroral records before 1700 AD. Due to the inhomogeneity of the auroral records, the EVT has been conducted separately for the data before 1700 and after 1700, finding that the 100‐year auroral frequency is 25.66 [19.67, 33.67] based on the auroral data in 1000–1699, and 283.71 [183.14, 417.58] based on the auroral data in 1700–1900. The predictions of both the 50‐year and 100‐year auroral frequencies before 1700 AD agree well with the solar activity index.