The Association of Filaments, Polarity Inversion Lines, and Coronal Hole Properties with the Sunspot Cycle: An Analysis of the McIntosh Database

Abstract

Filaments and coronal holes, two principal features observed in the solar corona are sources of space weather variations. Filament formation is closely associated with polarity inversion lines (PIL) on the solar photosphere which separate positive and negative polarities of the surface magnetic field. The origin of coronal holes is governed by large-scale unipolar magnetic patches on the photosphere from where open magnetic field lines extend to the heliosphere. We study properties of filaments, PILs and coronal holes in solar cycles 20, 21, 22 and 23 utilizing the McIntosh archive. We detect a prominent cyclic behavior of filament length, PIL length, and coronal hole area with significant correspondence with the solar magnetic cycle. The spatio-temporal evolution of the geometric centers of filaments shows a butterfly-like structure and distinguishable pole-ward migration of long filaments during cycle maxima. We identify this rush to the poles of filaments to be co-temporal with the initiation of polar field reversal as gleaned from Mount Wilson and Wilcox Solar Observatory polar field observations and quantitatively establish their temporal correspondence. We analyze the filament tilt angle distribution to constrain their possible origins. Majority of the filaments exhibit negative and positive tilt angles in the northern and the southern hemispheres, respectively -- strongly suggesting that their formation is governed by the overall large-scale magnetic field distribution on the solar photosphere and not by the small-scale intra-active region magnetic field configurations. We also investigate the hemispheric asymmetry in filaments, PILs, and coronal holes. We find that the hemispheric asymmetry in filaments and PILs are positively correlated -- whereas coronal hole asymmetry is uncorrelated -- with sunspot area asymmetry.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in ApJ; 15 pages, 10 figures

References in corpus (10)

• Modelling the Global Solar Corona II: Coronal Evolution and Filament Chirality Comparison
• Modelling the Global Solar Corona: Filament Chirality Observations and Surface Simulations
• Observation and Simulation of Longitudinal Oscillations of an Active Region Prominence
• Coronal Holes and Open Magnetic Flux over Cycles 23 and 24
• Statistical Analysis of Filament Features Based on the Hα Solar Images from 1988 to 2013 by Computer Automated Detection Method
• Measurements of EUV Coronal Holes and Open Magnetic Flux
• Unusual Polar Conditions in Solar Cycle 24 and their Implications for Cycle 25
• Modelling the Global Solar Corona III: Origin of the Hemispheric Pattern of Filaments
• Tilt Angles of Solar Filaments over the Period 1919-2014
• Long term study of the solar filaments from the Synoptic Maps as derived from $H_{\alpha }$ Spectroheliograms of Kodaikanal Observatory

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Understanding Sun-as-a-star variability of solar Balmer lines
• Time-Latitude Distribution of Prominences for 10 Solar Cycles: A study using Kodaikanal, Meudon and Kanzelhohe Data
• Solar Cycle Evolution of Filaments over a Century: Investigations with the Meudon and McIntosh Hand-drawn Archives
• Detection of Solar Filaments using Suncharts from Kodaikanal Solar Observatory Archive Employing a Clustering Approach
• 24 synoptic maps of average magnetic field in 296 prominences measured by the Hanle effect during the ascending phase of solar cycle 21
• Can meridional flow variations explain the observed rising/declining phase asymmetry in the solar cycle?