Reconstruction of pretelescopic and early telescopic solar activity cycles from auroral records

The historical record of low-latitude aurorae is essentially a poorly sampled record of the largest space weather events (SWEs). Its use for the identification of individual solar cycles is hindered by the low event rate and by the fact that the solar cycle profile of the occurrence of SWEs does not closely follow the variation of sunspot numbers. Based on recent studies of the solar cycle dependence of the occurrence rates of large SWEs, here we construct Monte-Carlo simulations of a large number of activity cycles to identify the optimal procedure to infer the characteristics of underlying solar cycles from the sparse record. We find that a reliable reconstruction of the cycle phase (>90% of reconstructed minima corresponding to actual minima within ±2 years) is possible whenever the long-term mean event rate (annual mean number of space weather events resulting in low-latitude auroral sightings) reaches or exceeds a value around 3. This condition is found to be satisfied during most of the the Early Modern Active Period (EMAP), a century-long period of normal solar activity between the Spörer and Maunder Minima. For the numbering of solar cycles in the EMAP we introduce the "telescopic era", where Tn denotes the nth cycle from the first telescopically observed cycle, T0, ongoing in 1610. Using our optimal procedure we reconstruct a series of 8 solar activity cycles from T-5 to T2 (1560-1640). Earlier cycles starting from 1540 can be reconstructed with a somewhat lower degree of reliability. Comparing our results with radionuclide-based reconstructions and sunspot observations we find a good overall correspondence, with the exception of the last cycle before the Maunder Minimum.