Solar activities and climate change during the last millennium recorded in Korean chronicles

Abstract

Korean chronicles have a large amount of observational records of natural phenomena, including astronomical and meteorological events over two thousand years. Here we examine the correlation of solar activity and climate change from historical sunspot and frost records in the Korean chronicles. There are 42 sunspot records in Goryeo Dynasty (918–1392 CE) and 13 records in Joseon Dynasty (1392–1910 CE). The sunspot records in Goryeo Dynasty show a periodicity in good agreement with the well-known solar activity of 11 years. Korean sunspot records suggest that the solar activity in Joseon Dynasty decreased compared with that in the previous ∼500 years. In order to examine the long-period variation of solar activity, we include Chinese historical sunspot records in our analysis to supplement the lack of Korean records, and find a new ∼240-yr long-period solar activity from the power spectral analysis. Korean chronicles also have about 700 frost records during the last millennium. We investigate these frost records and find a sign of cooling down that can be interpreted as climate change during the last millennium. We also find ∼240-yr cooling period from the historical frost records, which is well in accord with that of solar activity. Therefore, we conclude that the solar activity has decreased during the last one thousand years and also has a long-term variation of ∼240 years.