Vector Magnetograph Observations by the Solar Flare Telescope at Boao

We report that vector magnetograph (VMG) observations of the solar photosphere are being carride out by the Solar Flare Telescope (SOFT) at BOAO. The VMG uses a narrow band Lyot filter (FWHM=0 125A) for Stokes parameter (I, Q, U, V) observations to obtain longitudinal and transverse fields. We have obtained a filter convolved line profile of Fe I 6302 5 for VMG by changing the central wavelength of the Lyot filter, which is consistent with the Sacremento Peak spectral atlas data. Using the line profile, we have determined calibration coefficients of longitudinal and transverse fields by the line slope method. Then we have compared vector fields of AR8422 observed at BOAO with those at Mitaka. The comparison shows that longitudinal fields are very similar to each other, but transverse fields are a little different. Finally, we present Hα and magnetic observations of AR8419 during its flaring activity (M3 1/1B).

A possible mechanism of stimulation of seismic activity by ionizing radiation of solar flares

A possible mechanism of earthquake triggering by ionizing radiation of solar flares is considered.A theoretical model and results of numerical calculations of disturbance of electric field,electric current,and heat release in lithosphere associated with variation of ionosphere conductivity caused by absorption of ionizing radiation of solar flares are presented.A generation of geomagnetic field disturbances in a range of seconds/tens of seconds is possible as a result of large-scale perturbation of a conductivity of the bottom part of ionosphere in horizontal direction in the presence of external electric field.Amplitude-time characteristics of the geomagnetic disturbance depend upon a perturbation of integral conductivity of ionosphere.Depending on relation between integral Hall and Pedersen conductivities of disturbed ionosphere the oscillating and aperiodic modes of magnetic disturbances may be observed.For strong perturbations of the ionosphere conductivities amplitude of pulsations may obtain^102 nT.In this case the amplitude of horizontal component of electric field on the Earth surface obtains 0.01 mV/m,electric current density in lithosphere-10-6 A/m2,and the power density of heat release produced by the generated current is 10-7 W/m3.It is shown that the absorption of ionizing radiation of solar flares can result in variations of a density of telluric currents in seismogenic faults comparable with a current density generated in the Earth crust by artificial pulsed power systems(geophysical MHD generator"Pamir・2"and electric pulsed facility"ERGU・600"),which provide regional earthquake triggering and spatiotemporal variation of seismic activity.Therefore,triggering of seismic events is possible not only by man-made pulsed power sources but also by the solar flares.The obtained results may be a physical basis for a novel approach to solve the problem of short・term earthquake prediction based on electromagnetic triggering phenomena.

Rethinking the solar flare paradigm

It is widely accepted that solar flares involve release of magnetic energy stored in the solar corona above an active region, but existing models do not include the explicitly time-dependent electrodynamics needed to describe such energy release. A flare paradigm is discussed that includes the electromotive force （EMF） as the driver of the flare, and the flare-associated current that links different regions where magnetic reconnection, electron acceleration, the acceleration of mass motions and current closure occur. The EMF becomes localized across regions where energy conversion occurs, and is involved in energy propagation between these regions.

Study of ionospheric disturbances during solar flare events using the SuperDARN Hokkaido radar

It is well known that many types of ionospheric disturbances occur during solar flare events. The sudden increase in total electron content （SITEC） has been studied for several decades, but total electron content （TEC） data do not provide information on the altitudinal distribution of electron density changes. Previous studies used HF Doppler system data to investigate the contributions of the D-region and F-region ionospheric electron density changes by examining the HF radio wave frequency dependence on the Doppler shift values. In this study we examined the dependence of the elevation angle of the Doppler shift of ground scatter echoes using the SuperDARN Hokkaido radar. We analyzed solar flare events from Dec 2006 to Mar 2012. A sudden fade-out of echoes was observed in almost all the events we analyzed, which was the result of the radio absorption associated with a significant increase in electron density within the D-region ionosphere. In addition, we discovered positive Doppler shifts just before the sudden fade-out of echoes. The Doppler shift is negatively correlated with the elevation angle of received radar waves. It indicates that variation of electron density in the D-region ionosphere is dominant during solar flare events. This result is consistent with a previous study. We also compared the irradiation by X-ray and extreme ultra violet rays observed by the GOES-14 and GOES-15 satellites, which generated Doppler shifts. A positive Doppler shift is consistent with a change of X-ray

Energy and spectral analysis of confined solar flares from radio and X-ray observations

The energy and spectral shape of radio bursts may help us understand the generation mechanism of solar eruptions,including solar flares,coronal mass ejections,eruptive filaments,and various scales of jets.The different kinds of flares may have different characteristics of energy and spectral distribution.In this work,we selected 10 mostly confined flare events during October 2014 to investigate their overall spectral behaviour and the energy emitted in microwaves by using radio observations from microwaves to interplanetary radio waves,and X-ray observations of GOES,RHESSI,and Fermi/GBM.We found that:all the confined flare events were associated with a microwave continuum burst extending to frequencies of9.4~15.4 GHz,and the peak frequencies of all confined flare events are higher than 4.995 GHz and lower than or equal to 17 GHz.The median value is around 9 GHz.The microwave burst energy(or nuence)and the peak frequency are found to provide useful criteria to estimate the power of solar flares.The observations imply that the magnetic field in confined flares tends to be stronger than that in 412 flares studied by Nita et al.(2004).All 10 events studied did not produce detectable hard X-rays with energies above~300 keV indicating the lack of efficient acceleration of electrons to high energies in the confined flares.

Multi-wavelength study of energetic processes during solar flare occurrence

This paper is an attempt to understand the physical processes occurring in different layers of the solar atmosphere during a solar flare.For a complete understanding of the flare,we must analyze multiwavelength datasets,as emission at different wavelengths originates from different layers in the solar atmosphere.Also,flares are transient and localized events observed to occur at all longitudes.With these considerations,we have carried out multi-wavelength analysis of two representative flare events.One event occurred close to the center of the solar disk and the other occurred close to the limb.In the former case,we examine emission from the lower layers of the solar atmosphere.Therefore the chromosphere,transition region and also photospheric magnetogram can be analyzed.On the other hand,in the near-limb event,coronal features can be clearly examined.In this paper,the first event studied is the M1.1 class flare from the active region NOAA 10649 located at S10 E14 and the second event is the M1.4 class flare from the active region 10713 located at S12 W90.In both cases,we have acquired excellent multi-wavelength data sets.The observations from multi-instrumental data clearly demonstrate that flares occur in the vicinity of sunspots.These are regions of strong magnetic field with mixed polarity.

Radio Fiber Fine Structure During the Solar Flare on July 14, 2000

On July 14, 2000, a type IV solar radio burst was observed at 10:43-11:00 UT with the 1-2 GHz digital spectrometer of National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC). Many fiber fine structures superposed on the type IV burst were detected in the same interval. A theoretical interpretation for the fibers is performed based upon a model of magnetic-mirror loop configuration in the solar corona. In this model, the source of the fiber emission is considered as the ducting of whistler solitons within the magnetic-mirror loop. A quantitative estimation using the observed data indicats that the magnetic field strength of the radio source is about 1.451×10 -2≤B 0≤2.734×10 -2 T, and that a fiber is composed of 4×10 15 solitons occupying a volume of about 1.2×108 km3. For the duct through which the whistler solitons passed within the magnetic-mirror loop, its diameter and the length are worked out, namely, d≈120 km and Δr≈104 km, respectively.

A New Pathway for Incorporating the Impact of Solar Flares and Other Space Activity into Climate Modelling

A recent development in climate research is the recognition that space activity such as solar flares, gamma ray bursts, supernovas etc. can have a significant impact on the Earth. The existing methods of modelling space activity do not model these phenomena explicitly. Instead, their effect on ionization rates is formulated and then built into existing climate models. In this paper, based on the authors’ earlier work, several analytical approaches for modelling a solar flare hitting the Earth are presented. These methods can also be used for modelling gamma-ray bursts or cosmic rays striking our planet. In addition, a method of calculating the total amount of radiation received during a solar flare is proposed. The future use of the proposed modelling approaches within comprehensive global climate models allows for explicit modelling of space activity and provides a new pathway for studying the possible effects of this activity on the Earth.

Latitudinal Distribution of Solar Flares and Their Association with Coronal Mass Ejections

Major solar flare events have been utilised to study the latitudinal frequency distribution of solar flares in northern and southern hemispheres for the period of 1986 to 2003. A statistical analysis has been performed to obtain the correlation between Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and Forbush decrease (Fds) of cosmic ray intensity. Almost the same flares distribution in both hemispheres is found in association with CMEs. In a further analysis, it is noted that a larger number of CME-associated solar flares located in the northern hemisphere are found to be more effective in producing Forbush decreases.

Electron-Proton Pairing at High Temperatures, Solar Flares, and the FIP Effect

We analyze the line data from solar flares to present evidence for the emission spectrum of the recently discussed electron-proton pairs at high temperatures. We also point out that since the pairing phenomenon provides an additional source for these lines—the conventional source being the highly ionized high-Z atoms already existing in the solar atmosphere, we have a plausible explanation of the FIP effect.

Anomaly distribution of ionospheric total electron content responses to some solar flares

Previous studies have shown that the ionospheric responses to a solar flare are significantly dependent on the solar zenith angle(SZA):the ionospheric responses are negatively related to the SZAs.The largest enhancement in electron density always occurs around the subsolar point.However,from 2001 to 2014,the global distribution of total electron content(TEC)responses showed no obvious relationship between the increases in TEC and the SZA during some solar flares.During these solar flares,the greatest enhancements in TEC did not appear around the subsolar point,but rather far away from the subsolar point.The distribution of TEC enhancements showed larger TEC enhancements along the same latitude.The distribution of anomalous ionospheric responses to the solar flares was not structured the same as traveling ionospheric disturbances.This anomaly distribution was also unrelated to the distribution of background neutral density.It could not be explained by changes in the photochemical process induced by the solar flares.Thus,the transport process could be one of the main reasons for the anomaly distribution of ionospheric responses to the solar flares.This anomaly distribution also suggests that not only the photochemical process but also the transport process could significantly affect the variation in ionospheric electron density during some solar flares.

Microwave Type U and RS Bursts in the X2.2 Solar Flare on 15 February 2011

Two groups of microwave type U and Reverse-Slope(RS)bursts after the Soft X-Ray(SXR)maximum were observed with the 2.6~3.8GHz spectrometer of Chinese Solar Broadband Radio Spectrometers(SBRS/Huairou)on 15 February 2011,when an X2.2 solar flare occurred in the Active Region(AR)NOAA 11158.A Shear-driven Quadrupolar Reconnection(SQR)model was utilized to analyze these bursts and the two loops involved were found to be basically in the same spatial scale and have a height difference of about 1300 km.These bursts were interpreted to be a result of a new reconnection process between the two similar-scaled loops.

Ensemble prediction model of solar proton events associated with solar flares and coronal mass ejections

An ensemble prediction model of solar proton events （SPEs）, combining the information of solar flares and coronal mass ejections （CMEs）, is built. In this model, solar flares are parameterized by the peak flux, the duration and the longitude. In addition, CMEs are parameterized by the width, the speed and the measurement position angle. The importance of each parameter for the occurrence of SPEs is estimated by the information gain ratio. We find that the CME width and speed are more informative than the flare’s peak flux and duration. As the physical mechanism of SPEs is not very clear, a hidden naive Bayes approach, which is a probability-based calculation method from the field of machine learning, is used to build the prediction model from the observational data. As is known, SPEs originate from solar flares and/or shock waves associated with CMEs. Hence, we first build two base prediction models using the properties of solar flares and CMEs, respectively. Then the outputs of these models are combined to generate the ensemble prediction model of SPEs. The ensemble prediction model incorporating the complementary information of solar flares and CMEs achieves better performance than each base prediction model taken separately.

Possible Connections between X-Solar Flares and Worldwide Variation in Seismicity Enhancement

We developed a?statistical study analyzing global seismicity enhancement and its variation?overtwenty years.?X-flares sometimes occur in conjunction with Coronal Mass Ejections (CME),which make their connection with the Earth’s magnetosphere stronger.?The preliminary study divided the Earth into seven regions determined by longitude and latitude, and nine levels of depth valid for most locations?in the?Pacific area.?The results showed that X beams influenced seismicity in terrestrial localities, mainly high magnitude earthquakes occurring below the crust at 70 km.?These internal enhancements happen without the presence of any external forces such as studied in Solar Speed Winds.?Nevertheless, those variations are perceptible in the presence of intense X flares and CME and less observed in the periods during which flares were absent. Two cases of high magnitude earthquakes in recent?years are analyzed, and the extreme external conditions of those events fit?with this theory.

Structure of the Program of Short-term Prediction of Powerful Solar Flares

Input data of the system are two-dimensional images and one-dimensional distributions of total and polarized solar emission at 5.2 cm wavelength obtained with SSRT. Together with photoheliograms, magnetograms, Hα-filtergrams and characteristics of active regions received from other sources, they form the initial database. The first stage includes superimposing the images, identifying microwave sources with active regions, assigning NOAA numbers to the sources, and determining for each active region the heliolatitude, extent, and inclination angle of the group's axis to the equator. These data are used to calculate the boundaries of longitude zones for each active region. A next stage involves determining the brightness temperatures of microwave sources less than the polarization distribution, the degree of polarization, and microwave emission flux, as well as calculating the parameters of microwave sources. Each parameter is assigned its own value of the weight factor, and the sum of values is used to draw the conclusion about the flare occurrence probability in each active region and on the Sun in general.

Preliminary Results of Solar Flare Induced D-Region Perturbations over UKM Using Stanford AWESOME Receiver

We present the preliminary results of VLF signal perturbations produced due to solar flare. The data were recorded by the Stanford VLF AWESOME receiver located at National University of Ma-laysia, Selangor. Two new long distance (>1000 km) VLF paths, JJI-UKM (2700 km) and NWC-UKM (3300 km) were analyzed simultaneously. Data from the GOES satellite were used to determine the onset time and type of each of these flares. Results indicated that all five solar flare events with an X-ray peak flux above 10-5 W/m2 (M-class) were recorded, 37.5% for X-ray flux greater than 10-6 W/m2 (C-class), while the weakest X-ray flux recorded was 2.6 × 10-7 W/m2 (B-class) with 0.24% probing potentiality. We found a strong positive correlation (0.84) between solar flare radiation intensity and the values of amplitude and phase perturbations for both paths. The values of amplitude and phase perturbations time-correlated with solar flare, varied from 0.2 to 5 dB and 0.15 to 20 degree respectively. These findings are in complete agreement with previous works and demonstrate that the data obtained by the UKM AWESOME observation station will provide addi-tional contribution to the study of ELF/VLF waves phenomena in the ionosphere/magnetosphere, especially at low latitudes region.

Prospects of the Hard X-Ray Instrument POLAR to Measure Polarization of Solar Flares

In-depth studies of solar flares emissions and energy releases include analyses of polarization data. Polarization gives clear information about mechanisms and processes leading to electron acceleration and photon production. Despite of many past attempts, the key energy range of hard X-rays was only rarely explored and results were inconclusive. To large extend it was due to greater instrumental complications. Currently several novel polarimeters are either to be employed or under constructions for both balloon and satellite based observations. The novel hard X-ray polarimeter POLAR is an instrument developed by a collaboration between Switzerland, China and Poland. It is primarily designed for high accuracy polarization measurements from the prompt photon emissions of the gamma-ray bursts. The satellite orientation and instrument pointing direction make it also capable for precise measurements of polarization in solar flares. The instrument should fly in near future onboard of the Chinese Space Station TG2.

Observational Evidences for Extremely Strong Magnetic Fields in Solar Flares

New observational data related to the X1.1/2N solar flare of 17 July 2004 were investigated and compared with some old data for other powerful flares and non-flare regions. Observations were carried out with the Echelle spectrograph of the Kyiv University Astronomical Observatory. The Stokes I ± V profiles of several metallic lines with different effective Lande factors geff have been analyzed including the FeI 5434.5 line with very low magnetic sensitivity (geff = –0.014). The obvious evidences of the emissive Zeeman effect were found as in lines with great and middle Lande factors as in FeI 5434.5 line. On the basis of all analyzed data one can conclude that upper magnetic field limit in flares can reach 70 - 90 kG, i.e. about more order higher than the well-known magnetic fields in great sunspots. The possible physical nature of such superstrong fields is discussed.

Calculation of ¹⁰Be &¹⁴C Production Rates in the Solar Atmosphere: Implications for Solar Flare Spectral Index

Production rates for the short-lived radionuclides 10Be (T1/2=1.36Myr) and14C(T1/2=5730 yr) in the solar atmosphere were calculated. As both radionuclides are produced through spallation reaction of solar energetic particles (SEP) with oxygen as the primary target, the prevalence of each radionuclide is linked. For the calculations, we assumed power law distribution for SEP with spectral index, r, ranging from 2.5 to 4. We find the 10Be and14Cflux rate at the surface of the Sun to range from 0.007 cm﹣2.s﹣1 to 2.55 cm﹣2.s﹣1 for 10Be, and from 0.13 cm﹣2.s﹣1 to 24.13 cm﹣2.s﹣1 for14C. These radio-nuclides are then entrained in the solar wind. From these flux rate calculations and comparison with experimentally measured flux rates ,we find the most likely time averaged solar flare spectral index to be r = ~3.3.

Cosmic Ray Associated with Coronal Index and Solar Flare Index during Solar Cycle 22 - 23

We study the relation between monthly average counting rates of the cosmic ray intensity (CRI) observed at Moscow Neutron Monitoring Station, solar flare index (SFI) and coronal index during the solar cycles 22 and 23, for the period 1986-2008. The long-term behaviour of various solar activity parameters: sunspot numbers (SSN), solar flare index (Hα flare index), coronal index (CI) in relation to the duration of solar cycles 22 and 23 is examined. We find that the correlation coefficient of CRI with the coronal index as well as Hα flare index is relatively large anti-correlation during solar cycle 22. However, the monthly mean values of sunspot number, Hα flare index, and coronal index are well positively correlated with each other. We have analyzed the statistical analysis of the above parameters using of linear model and second order polynomial fits model.