Solar abundances of oxygen and neon derived from solar wind observations

Context.Recently, a revision of the solar abundances of C, N, and O to substantially lower values has led to a controversy on solar opacities in the solar standard model and to the suggestion to revise the solar abundance of neon upward by as much as a factor of 1.6 leading to enhanced solar neon/oxygen abundance ratios by a factor of 3. Neon and oxygen are neighboring elements with easily defined charged states in the solar wind, and they have been well identified and measured for over two decades in the solar wind under many circumstances and with several instruments. The solar wind Ne/O ratio is 0.14 with a conservative error estimate of ±0.03, consistent with the coronal value derived from solar energetic particle measurements.