Latitudinal variability of large-scale coronal temperature and its association with the density and the global magnetic field

Abstract

In this paper we utilize the latitude distribution of the coronal temperature during the period 1984–1992 that was derived in a paper by Guhathakurta et al, 1993, utilizing ground-based intensity observations of the green (5303Å Fe XIV) and red (6374Å Fe X) coronal forbidden lines from the National Solar Observatory at Sacramento Peak, and estabish its association with the global magnetic field and the density distributions in the corona. A determination of plasma temperature,T, was estimated from the intensity ratio Fe X/Fe XIV (whereT is inversely proportional to the ratio), since both emission lines come from ionized states of Fe, and the ratio is only weakly dependent on density. We observe that there is a large-scale organization of the inferred coronal temperature distribution that is associated with the large-scale, weak magnetic field structures and bright coronal features; this organization tends to persist through most of the magnetic activity cycle. These high-temperature structures exhibit time-space characteristics which are similar to those of the polar crown filaments. This distribution differs in spatial and temporal characterization from the traditional picture of sunspot and active region evolution over the range of the sunspot cycle, which are manifestations of the small-scale, strong magnetic field regions.