UAH PHYSICS COLLOQUIUM
UAH Optics Building: OB-234
Cookies & Coffee at 2:15 PM
Lecture at 2:30 PM
Q & A at 3:20 PM

Prediction of Coronal Mass Ejections from Vector Magnetograms

by

David Falconer
13 November 2001

During solar maximum, the Sun produces several Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) a day. Strong CMEs produces large fluxes of high-energy ions in interplanetary space. Some CMEs impact the Earth's magnetosphere creating magnetic storms. These effects can harm satellites, astronauts, radio communication, and occasionally power grids. These adverse societal effects are strong motivation for seeking a reliable way to predict CMEs. One purpose of the NSF Space Weather Program is to fund research focussed on developing CME prediction methods.

Many strong CMEs originate in Solar active regions. We are investigating four different global measures of an active region's magnetic field as predictors of the CME productivity of the active region. The global measures are obtained from MSFC vector magnetograms of the active region. Two of the measures are different indicators of the global twist (or global nonpotentiality) of the active region's magnetic field (The global twist is a gauge of the free magnetic energy stored in the field and available in principle for driving a CME.). Another is a measure of the size of the active region. The fourth is the product of two of the other measures and is a normalize measure of the global twist of the magnetic field. We find that all four measures are statistically-significantly correlated with each other, and with the CME productivity of the active regions.

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