• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.145-148
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• 2014

There was a research on the prolongation of solar cycle 23 by the solar cyclic variation of solar, interplanetary geomagnetic parameters by Oh & Kim (2013). They also suggested that the sunspot number cannot typically explain the variation of total solar irradiance any more. Instead of the sunspot number, a new index is introduced to explain the degree of solar activity. We have analyzed the frequency of sunspot appearance, the length of solar cycle, and the rise time to a solar maximum as the characteristics of solar cycle. Then, we have examined the predictability of solar activity by the characteristics of preceding solar cycle. We have also investigated the hemispheric variation of flare index for the periods that the leading sunspot has the same magnetic polarity. As a result, it was found that there was a good correlation between the length of preceding solar cycle and spotless days. When the length of preceding solar cycle gets longer, the spotless days increase. It is also shown that the shorter rise time to a solar maximum is highly correlated with the increase of sunspots at a solar maximum. Therefore, the appearance frequency of spotless days and the length of solar cycle are more significant than the general sunspot number as an index of declining solar activity. Additionally, the activity of flares leads in the northern hemisphere and is stronger in the hemisphere with leading sunspots in positive polarity than in the hemisphere with leading sunspots in negative polarity. This result suggests that it is necessary to analyze the magnetic polarity's effect on the flares and to interpret the period from the solar maximum to solar maximum as the definition of solar cycle.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.101-106
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• 2013

The length of solar cycle 23 has been prolonged up to about 13 years. Many studies have speculated that the solar cycle 23/24 minimum will indicate the onset of a grand minimum of solar activity, such as the Maunder Minimum. We check the trends of solar (sunspot number, solar magnetic fields, total solar irradiance, solar radio flux, and frequency of solar X-ray flare), interplanetary (interplanetary magnetic field, solar wind and galactic cosmic ray intensity), and geomagnetic (Ap index) parameters (SIG parameters) during solar cycles 21-24. Most SIG parameters during the period of the solar cycle 23/24 minimum have remarkably low values. Since the 1970s, the space environment has been monitored by ground observatories and satellites. Such prevalently low values of SIG parameters have never been seen. We suggest that these unprecedented conditions of SIG parameters originate from the weakened solar magnetic fields. Meanwhile, the deep 23/24 solar cycle minimum might be the portent of a grand minimum in which the global mean temperature of the lower atmosphere is as low as in the period of Dalton or Maunder minimum.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.91-102
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• 1999

We have made intensive calculations on the maximum relative sunspot number and the date of solar maximum of 23rd solar cycle, by using the statistical and precursor methods to predict solar activity cycle. According to our results of solar data processing by statistical method, solar maximum comes at between February and July of 2000 year and at that time, the smoothed sunspot number will reach to $114.3\~122.8$. while precursor method gives rather dispersed value of $118\~17$ maximum sunspot number. It is found that prediction by statistical method using smoothed relative sunspot number is more accurate than by any method to use any data of 10.7cm radio fluxes and geomagnetic aa, Ap indexes, from the full analysis of solar cycle pattern of these data. In fact, current ascending pattern of 23rd solar cycle supports positively our predicted values. Predicted results by precursor method for $Ap_{avg},\;aa_{31-36}$ indexes show similar values to those by statistical method. Therefore, these indexes can be used as new precursors for the prediction of 23rd or next solar cycle.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.45.3-46
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• 2016

Solar activity shows a self-similarity as it has many periods of activity cycle in the time series of long-term observation, such as 13.5, 51, 150, 300 days, and 11, 88 years and so on. Since fractal dimension is a quantitative parameter for this kind of an irregular time series, we applied this method to long-term observations including sunspot number, total solar irradiance, and 3.75 GHz solar radio flux to predict the start and maximum times as well as expected maximum sunspot number for the next solar cycle. As a result, we found that the radio flux data tend to have lower fractal dimensions than the sunspot number data, which means that the radio emission from the sun is more regular than the solar activity expressed by sunspot number. Based on the relation between radio flux of 3.75 GHz and sunspot number, we could calculate the expected maximum sunspot number of solar cycle 24 as 156, while the observed value is 146. For the maximum time, estimated mean values from 7 different observations are January 2013 and this is quite different to observed value of February 2014. We speculate this is from extraordinary extended properties of solar cycle 24. As the cycle length of solar cycle 24, 10.1 to 12.8 years are expected, and the mean value is 11.0. This implies that the next solar cycle will be started at December 2019.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.25-33
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• 2015

In this study, heating performance of the air-cooled heat pump with vapor-injection (VI) cycles, re-heater and solar heat storage tank was investigated experimentally. Devices used in the experiment were comprised of a VI compressor, re-heater, economizer, variable evaporator, flat-plate solar collector for hot water, thermal storage tank, etc. As working fluid, refrigerant R410A for heat pump and propylene glycol (PG) for solar collector were used. In this experiment, heating performance was compared by three cycles, A, B and C. In case of Cycle B, heat exchange was conducted between VI suction refrigerant and inlet refrigerant of condenser by re-heater (Re-heater in Fig. 3, No. 3) (Cycle B), and Cycle A was not use re-heater on the same operating conditions. In case of Cycle C, outlet refrigerant from evaporator go to thermal storage tank for getting a thermal energy from solar thermal storage tank while re-heater also used. As a result, Cycle C reached the target temperature of water in a shorter time than Cycle B and Cycle A. In addition, it was founded that, as for the coefficient of heating performance($COP_h$), the performance in Cycle C was improved by 13.6% higher than the performance of Cycle B shown the average $COP_h$ of 3.0 and by 18.9% higher than the performance of Cycle A shown the average $COP_h$ of 2.86. From this results, It was confirmed that the performance of heat pump system with refrigerant re-heater and VI cycle can be improved by applying solar thermal energy as an auxiliary heat source.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.23-29
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• 2021

Utilizing a new version of the sunspot number and group sunspot number dataset available since 2015, we have statistically studied the relationship between solar activity parameters describing solar cycles and the slope of the linear relationship between the monthly sunspot numbers and the monthly number of active days in percentage (AD). As an effort of evaluating possibilities in use of the number of active days to predict solar activity, it is worthwhile to revisit and extend the analysis performed earlier. In calculating the Pearson's linear correlation coefficient r, the Spearman's rank-order correlation coefficient rs, and the Kendall's τ coefficient with the rejection probability, we have calculated the slope for a given solar cycle in three different ways, namely, by counting the spotless day that occurred during the ascending phase and the descending phase of the solar cycle separately, and during the period corresponding to solar minimum ± 2 years as well. We have found that the maximum solar sunspot number of a given solar cycle and the duration of the ascending phase are hardly correlated with the slope of a linear function of the monthly sunspot numbers and AD. On the other hand, the duration of a solar cycle is found to be marginally correlated with the slope with the rejection probabilities less than a couple of percent. We have also attempted to compare the relation of the monthly sunspot numbers with AD for the even and odd solar cycles. It is inconclusive, however, that the slopes of the linear relationship between the monthly group numbers and AD are subject to the even and odd solar cycles.

• Advances in Energy Research
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.29-45
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• 2016

There has been a growing interest in the recent time for the development of solar power tower plants, which are mainly used for utility scale power generation. Combined heat and power (CHP) is an efficient and clean approach to generate electric power and useful thermal energy from a single heat source. The waste heat from the topping Brayton cycle is utilized in the bottoming HRSG cycle for driving steam turbine and also to produce process steam so that efficiency of the cycle is increased. A thermal storage system is likely to add greater reliability to such plants, providing power even during non-peak sunshine hours. This paper presents a conceptual configuration of a solar power tower combined heat and power plant with a topping air Brayton cycle. A simple downstream Rankine cycle with a heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) and a process heater have been considered for integration with the solar Brayton cycle. The conventional GT combustion chamber is replaced with a solar receiver. The combined cycle has been analyzed using energy as well as exergy methods for a range of pressure ratio across the GT block. From the thermodynamic analysis, it is found that such an integrated system would give a maximum total power (2.37 MW) at a much lower pressure ratio (5) with an overall efficiency exceeding 27%. The solar receiver and heliostats are the main components responsible for exergy destruction. However, exergetic performance of the components is found to improve at higher pressure ratio of the GT block.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.267-276
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• 2000

A numerical study has been carried out to find out the optimal design condition of a solar absorption cooling system. The system was composed of solar collectors and an absorption chiller with LiBr/water The System performance with commercial single effect(SE) cycle and a new single effect/double lift(SE/DL) cycle utilizing low temperature hot water was calculated and compared. It was found that the required solar collector area grew exponentially as the overall heat loss coefficient of solar collectors increased. For instance, the required area for cooling capacity of 1 USRT was $17m^2$ if heat loss coefficient was 4 W/$m^2\;cdot\;K$. If heat loss coefficient was doubled($8\;W/m^2\;cdot\;$K), the required collector area was increased by 6 times($100m^2$) .It was also found that the SE-cycle as the heat loss coefficient of solar collectors increased. Generally, a SE/DL-cycle seems to be more advantageous than a SE-cycle if loss coefficient of solar collector is greater than 4 W/$m^2\;cdot\;K$.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.121-128
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• 2021

It has been known that the global asteroseismic parameters as well as the stellar acoustic mode parameters vary with stellar magnetic activity. Some solar-like stars whose variations are thought to be induced by magnetic activity, however, show mode frequencies changing with different magnitude and phase unlike what is expected for the Sun. Therefore, it is of great importance to find out whether expected relations are consistently manifested regardless of the phase of the stellar magnetic cycle, in the sense that observations are apt to cover a part of a complete cycle of stellar magnetic activity unless observations span several decades. Here, we explore whether the observed relations of the global seismic parameters hold good regardless of the phase of the stellar magnetic cycle, even if observations only cover a part of the stellar magnetic cycle. For this purpose, by analyzing photometric Sun-as-a-star data from 1996 to 2019 covering solar cycles 23 and 24, we compare correlations of the global asteroseismic parameters and magnetic proxies for four separate intervals of the solar cycle: solar minima ±2 years, solar minima +4 years, solar maxima ±2 years, and solar maxima +4 years. We have found that the photometric magnetic activity proxy, S_ph, is an effective proxy for the solar magnetic activity regardless of the phase of the solar cycle. The amplitude of the mode envelope correlates negatively with the solar magnetic activity regardless of the phase of the solar cycle. However, relations between the central frequency of the envelope and the envelope width are vulnerable to the phase of the stellar magnetic cycle.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.99-99
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• 2011

A statistical study of coronal hole merging and splitting has been performed through Solar Cycle 23. The NOAA/SESC solar synoptic maps are examined to identify inarguably clear events of coronal hole merging and splitting. The numbers of merging events and splitting events are more or less comparable regardless of the phase in the solar cycle. The number of both events, however, definitely shows the phase dependence in the solar cycle. It apparently has a minimum at the solar minimum whereas its maximum is located in the declining phase of the sunspot activity, about a year after the second peak in Solar Cycle 23. There are more events of merging and splitting in the descending phase than in the ascending phase. Interestingly, no event is found at the local minimum between the two peaks of the sunspot activity. This trend can be compared with the variation of the average magnetic field strength and the radial field component in the solar wind through the solar cycle. In Ulysses observations, both of these quantities have a minimum at the solar minimum while their maximum is located in the descending phase, a while after the second peak of the sunspot activity. At the local minimum between the two peaks in the solar cycle, the field strength and the radial component both have a shallow local minimum or an inflection point. At the moment, the physical reason for these resembling tendencies is difficult to understand with existing theories. Seeing that merging and splitting of coronal holes are possible by passage of opposite polarity magnetic structures, we may suggest that the energizing activities in the solar surface such as motions of flux tubes are not exactly in phase with sunspot generation, but are more active some time after the sunspot maximum.