Identification

Title

The global context of solar activity during the Whole Heliosphere Interval campaign

Abstract

The Whole Heliosphere Interval (WHI) was an international observing and modeling effort to characterize the 3-D interconnected "heliophysical" system during this solar minimum, centered on Carrington Rotation 2068, March 20 - April 16, 2008. During the latter half of the WHI period, the Sun presented a sunspot-free, deep solar minimum type face. But during the first half of CR 2068 three solar active regions flanked by two opposite-polarity, low-latitude coronal holes were present. These departures from the quiet Sun led to both eruptive activity and solar wind structure. Most of the eruptive activity, i.e., flares, filament eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), occurred during this first, active half of the interval. We determined the source locations of the CMEs and the type of associated region, such as active region, or quiet sun or active region prominence. To analyze the evolution of the events in the context of the global solar magnetic field and its evolution during the three rotations centered on CR 2068, we plotted the CME source locations onto synoptic maps of the photospheric magnetic field, of the magnetic and chromospheric structure, of the white light corona, and of helioseismological subsurface flows. Most of the CME sources were associated with the three dominant active regions on CR 2068, particularly AR 10989. Most of the other sources on all three CRs appear to have been associated with either isolated filaments or filaments in the north polar crown filament channel. Although calculations of the flux balance and helicity of the surface magnetic features did not clearly identify a dominance of one region over the others, helioseismological subsurface flows beneath these active regions did reveal a pronounced difference among them. These preliminary results suggest that the "twistedness" (i.e., vorticity and helicity) of subsurface flows and its temporal variation might be related to the CME productivity of active regions, similar to the relationship between flares and subsurface flows.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7kd1zfb

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2011-12-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact