Abstract
Since the late 70’s, successive satellite missions have been monitoring
the sun’s activity, recording total solar irradiance observations. These
measurements provide estimates of the Earth’s energy imbalance, i.e. the
difference of energy absorbed and emitted by our planet. With this
amount of TSI data, solar irradiance reconstruction models can be better
validated which can also improve studies looking at past climate
reconstructions (e.g., Maunder minimum). Various algorithms have been
proposed to merge the various TSI measurements recorded over the last 4
decades. We develop a 3-step algorithm based on data fusion, including a
stochastic noise model to take into account the short and long-term
correlations. We develop a wavelet filter in order to eliminate specific
correlations introduced by the data fusion. Comparing with previous
products,the mean value difference is below 0.1 W/m2and the discrepancy
with the solar minima is mostly below 0.05 W/m2. Next, we model the
frequency spectrum of this 40-year TSI composite time series with a
Generalized Gauss-Markov model(with white noise) due to an observe
flattening at high frequencies. It allows us to fit a linear trend in
these TSI time series by joint inversion with the stochastic noise model
via a maximum-likelihood estimator. Our results show that the amplitude
of such trend is ∼ -0.009+/-0.01 W/(m2.yr). We conclude that the trend
in these composite time series is mostly an artifact due to the solar
noise.