Disentangling the solar activity–solar wind predictive causality at Space Climate scales

Abstract

The variability in the magnetic activity of the Sun is the main source of the observed changes in the plasma and electromagnetic environments within the heliosphere. The primary way in which solar activity affects the Earth’s environment is via the solar wind and its transients. However, the relationship between solar activity and solar wind is not the same at the Space Weather and Space Climate time scales. In this work, we investigate this relationship exploiting five solar cycles data of Ca II K index and solar wind parameters, by taking advantage of the Hilbert–Huang Transform, which allows to separate the contribution at the different time scales. By filtering out the high-frequency components and looking at decennial time scales, we confirm the presence of a delayed response of solar wind to Ca II K index variations, with a time lag of \(\sim\) 3.1-year for the speed and \(\sim\) 3.4-year for the dynamic pressure. To assess the results in a stronger framework, we make use of a Transfer Entropy approach to investigate the information flow between the quantities and to test the causality of the relation. The time lag results from the latter are consistent with the cross-correlation ones, pointing out the presence of a statistical significant information flow from Ca II K index to solar wind dynamic pressure that peaks at time lag of 3.6-year. Such a result could be of relevance to build up a predictive model in a Space Climate context.