Abstract:
Consistent correlations between X-ray background flux (XBF) and sunspot area over three solar cycles suggest a strong relationship between the flux emergence at the locations of strong field regions, sunspots, and the coronal heating processes that ultimately result in coronal X-ray emission. We find that the pattern of variation of sunspot numbers shows noticeable deviations from the pattern depicted by the sunspot areas when compared to XBF. A weight factor, such as , assigned to individual spot groups in may provide better estimation of the true strength of solar cycles
