Berlin 2014 – scientific programme

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AKE: Arbeitskreis Energie

AKE 15: Symposium on Rare Events: Optimal Solutions and Challenges - from Charge Transfer Reactions to Supervolcanoes

AKE 15.3: Invited Talk

Wednesday, March 19, 2014, 17:30–18:00, Audimax

What do we know about extreme solar events? — •Ilya Usoskin — University of Oulu, Finland

Sun is the main driver of the life on Earth. However, extreme eruptive energetic events on the Sun can be hazardous in many respects, particularly for the modern technology and communication dependent society. It is crucially important, for technological and human being safety, to learn what could be the worst case scenario for an extreme solar event and what is its probability to occur. The era of direct scientific exploration of the Sun is short - from few decades to a century, and yet several strong harmful events had happened. Can we expect even greater events? How often? What shall we prepare for? In order to answer these questions, one has to rely upon indirect methods by analysing natural proxy archives.

Here we overview methods able to reveal the history of extreme solar events in the past, from thousands to millions of year, based on an analysis of cosmogenic isotopes in terrestrial archives (polar ice cores and tree rings) and in lunar rocks. The obtained statistics is discussed and a probability density function for extreme solar events to occur is presented.