Solar activities and climate change during the last millennium recoded in Korean chronicles / Plans for Astronomical cooperation between South and North Korea 

Speaker: 양홍진 박사님 (천문연구원)

Date: 2019/5/31, Friday, 11am

Room: B102

Language: 한국어

1.Korean chronicles have a large amount of observational records of natural phenomena, including astronomical and meteorological events over two thousand years. We examined the correlation of solar activity and climate change from historical sunspot and frost records in the Korean chronicles. Korean sunspot records suggest that the solar activity in Joseon Dynasty(朝鮮) decreased compared with that in the previous ~500 years. In order to examine the long-period variation of solar activity, we included Chinese historical sunspot records in our analysis to supplement the lack of Korean records, and find a new ~240-yr long-period solar activity from the power spectral analysis. We also investigated historical frost records and found a sign of cooling down that can be interpreted as climate change during the last millennium. We also found ~240-yr cooling period from the historical frost records, which is well in accord with that of solar activity. Therefore, we concluded that the solar activity had decreased during the last one thousand years and also has a long-term variation of ~240 years.

2.We are currently working on Astronomical cooperation between South and North Korea. In this talk, I would like to introduce plans for the following topics. -Interpretation of astronomical heritage in South and North Korea, and mutual exchange for joint research -Mt. Baekdu(白頭山) astronomical observatory -IAUGA2021 to hold an inter-Korean joint symposium