Title: Persistence of the Gleissberg (88-yr) Solar Cycle over the Last 10,000 Years: Evidence from Cosmogenic Isotopes
Author: Paul E. Damon
Affil: University of Arizona
Email: damon@geo.arizona.edu
Authors: Alexei N. Peristykh
Affils: University of Arizona
Abstract: Although there are other significant periods in the Fourier spectrum of
C time series (Damon and Sonett, 1991), the Gleissberg cycle is
unique because it can be directly related to solar activity. The cycle was
detected by Gleissberg through a low-pass filtering, secular smoothing
(Gleissberg, 1944), of both height and length of sunspot cycle
(Gleissberg, 1958). Frequency modulation (FM) as well as amplitude modulation
(AM) of Schwabe cycle has been known for a long time (Vitinsky, Kopecky and
Kuklin, 1986; Peristykh, 1993). We have previously pointed out that the change
in solar cycle length means that some regular process originating inside the Sun
with the period of 88 yrs frequency modulates the Schwabe cycle (Damon and
Peristykh, 1999).
Stability of the Gleissberg cycle is of great interest. For that
reason we have examined the longest cosmogenic isotope record provided by
C - INTCAL98 calibration record. The full record extends
back to 
11,600 yrs (before AD 1950). During this period of time despite
small gaps (requiring interpolation) the Gleissberg cycle has a period of 87.8
yrs. If we restrict our analysis to the last 9,140 yrs (before AD 1950)
where there are no gaps and no significant effect of interpolation we still
obtain the period of the Gleissberg cycle equal to 87.8 yrs (Damon and
Peristykh, 2000). However, time-frequency analysis (e.g., by the spectrogram
method) indicates small variations in period during the whole time interval thus
showing that there is some nonstationarity in the process expressed by the data.
The possibility that the Gleissberg cycle is related to forcing of past climate change during the entire Holocene is of great interest.
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