Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Geophysical Monograph Series, Volume 109. The Sun and the terrestrial magnetosphere have been the subjects of active research since the dawn of the space age. The capabilities of observing both systems with greater and greater detail evolved separately until the 1980s, when it was realized that definitive results on the connection between the Earth and the Sun would require a concerted and joint effort. It was also realized that sophisticated solar-terrestrial research communities existed within all the space-faring nations of the world and that no one of them could launch such an effort by itself. This realization led to the creation of the International Solar-Terrestrial Physics (ISTP) program, which now comprises at least 12 spacecraft and includes extensive ground-based observations and theory and modeling efforts.

An excursion through solar science, science history and geoclimate with a husband and wife team who revealed some of our sun's most stubborn secrets.

" ... Concise explanations and descriptions - easily read and readily understood - of what we know of the chain of events and processes that connect the Sun to the Earth, with special emphasis on space weather and Sun-Climate."--Dear Reader.

This book takes an excursion through solar science, science history, and geoclimate with a husband and wife team who revealed some of our sun's most stubborn secrets.E Walter and Annie S D Maunder's work helped in understanding our sun's chemical, electromagnetic and plasma properties. They knew the sun's sunspot migration patterns and its variable, climate-affecting, inactive and active states in short and long time frames. An inactive solar period starting in the mid-seventeenth century lasted approximately seventy years, one that E Walter Maunder worked hard to make us understand: the Maunder Minimum of c 1620-1720 (which was posthumously named for him).With ongoing concern over global warming, and the continuing failure to identify root causes driving earth's climatic changes, the Maunders' story outlines how our cyclical sun can alter climate. The book goes on to view the sun-earth connection in terms of geomagnetic variation and climatic change; contemporary views on the sun's operating mechanisms are explored, and the effects these have on the earth over long and short time scales are pondered.If not a call to widen earth's climate research to include the sun, this book strives to illustrate how solar causes and effects can influence earth's climate in ways we must understand in order to enhance solar system research and our well-being.

Summary: Solar particle outbursts are studied in an attempt to summarize the experimental knowledge in this field for the benefit of the spacecraft design engineer. A phenomenological description of solar particle events is presented and time histories and tabulated data are given for the major events. The anisotropy of high energy solar cosmic rays observed in several events is also treated.