Solar Sources of Interplanetary Magnetic Clouds Leading to Helicity Prediction

Abstract

This study identifies the solar origins of magnetic clouds that are observed at 1 AU and predicts the helical handedness of these clouds from the solar surface magnetic fields. We started with the magnetic clouds listed by the Magnetic Field Investigation (MFI) team supporting NASA's WIND spacecraft in what is known as the MFI table and worked backwards in time to identify solar events that produced these clouds. Our methods utilize magnetograms from the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) instrument on the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft so that we could only analyze MFI entries after the beginning of 2011. This start date and the end date of the MFI table gave us 37 cases to study. Of these we were able to associate only eight surface events with clouds detected by WIND at 1 AU. We developed a simple algorithm for predicting the cloud helicity which gave the correct handedness in all eight cases. The algorithm is based on the conceptual model that an ejected flux tube has two magnetic origination points at the positions of the strongest radial magnetic field regions of opposite polarity near the places where the ejected arches end at the solar surface. We were unable to find events for the remaining 29 cases: lack of a halo or partial halo CME in an appropriate time window, lack of magnetic and/or filament activity in the proper part of the solar disk, or the event was too far from disk center. The occurrence of a flare was not a requirement for making the identification but in fact flares, often weak, did occur for seven of the eight cases.

arXiv comment18 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables

References in corpus (18)

• The Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) Vector Magnetic Field Pipeline: SHARPs -- Space-weather HMI Active Region Patches
• The Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) Vector Magnetic Field Pipeline: Overview and Performance
• Driving major solar flares and eruptions: a review
• JHelioviewer - Time-dependent 3D visualisation of solar and heliospheric data
• Electric current in flares ribbons: observations and 3D standard model
• Origin and Structures of Solar Eruptions I: Magnetic Flux Rope (Invited Review)
• Structures of Interplanetary Magnetic Flux Ropes and Comparison with Their Solar Sources
• Interpreting Eruptive Behavior in NOAA AR 11158 via the Region's Magnetic Energy and Relative Helicity Budgets
• Predicting the magnetic vectors within coronal mass ejections arriving at Earth: 1. Initial Architecture
• Temporal Evolution of the Magnetic Topology of the NOAA Active Region 11158
• The global solar magnetic field -- identification of travelling, long-lived ripples
• On the Characteristics of Footpoints of Solar Magnetic Flux Ropes during the Eruption
• The Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) Vector Magnetic Field Pipeline: Magnetohydrodynamics Simulation Module for the Global Solar Corona
• The Nature of CME-Flare Associated Coronal Dimming
• Magnetic Flux of EUV Arcade and Dimming Regions as a Relevant Parameter for Early Diagnostics of Solar Eruptions - Sources of Non-Recurrent Geomagnetic Storms and Forbush Decreases
• Flares and Magnetic Non-potentiality of NOAA AR 11158
• Generation of a North/South Magnetic Field Component from Variations in the Photospheric Magnetic Field
• Solar Sources of Interplanetary Magnetic Clouds Leading to Helicity Prediction

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Solar Sources of Interplanetary Magnetic Clouds Leading to Helicity Prediction