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Tests of Sunspot Number Sequences: 1. Using Ionosonde Data

More than 70 years ago it was recognised that ionospheric F2-layer critical frequencies $foF2$ had a strong relationship to sunspot number. Using historic datasets from the Slough and Washington ionosondes, we evaluate the best statistical fits of $foF2$ to sunspot numbers (at each Universal Time [UT] separately) in order to search for drifts and abrupt changes in the fit residuals over Solar Cycles 17 - 21. Polynomial fits are made both with and without allowance for the white-light facular area, which has been reported as being associated with cycle-to-cycle changes in the sunspot number - $foF2$ relationship. Over the interval studied here, the ISN, $R$, the backbone group number $Rbb$, and the corrected number $Rc$ largely differ in their allowance for the 'Waldmeier discontinuity' around 1945 (the correction factor for which for $R$, $Rbb$ and $Rc$ is, respectively, zero, effectively over 20%, and explicitly 11.6%). It is shown that for Solar Cycles 18 - 21, all three sunspot data sequences perform well, but that the fit residuals are lowest and most uniform for $Rbb$. We here use $foF2$ for those UTs for which $R$, $Rbb$, and $Rc$ all give correlations exceeding 0.99 for intervals both before and after the Waldmeier discontinuity. The error introduced by the Waldmeier discontinuity causes $R$ to underestimate the fitted values based on the $foF2$ data for 1932 - 1945 but $Rbb$ overestimates them by almost the same factor, implying that the correction for the Waldmeier discontinuity inherent in $Rbb$ is too large by a factor of two. Fit residuals are smallest and most uniform for $Rc$ and the ionospheric data support the optimum discontinuity multiplicative correction factor derived from the independent Royal Greenwich Observatory (RGO) sunspot group data for the same interval.