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A Challenging Solar Eruptive Event of 18 November 2003 and the Causes of the 20 November Geomagnetic Superstorm. I. Unusual History of an Eruptive Filament

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Abstract

This is the first of four companion papers, which comprehensively analyze a complex eruptive event of 18 November 2003 in active region (AR) 10501 and the causes of the largest Solar Cycle 23 geomagnetic storm on 20 November 2003. Analysis of a complete data set, not considered before, reveals a chain of eruptions to which hard X-ray and microwave bursts responded. A filament in AR 10501 was not a passive part of a larger flux rope, as usually considered. The filament erupted and gave origin to a coronal mass ejection (CME). The chain of events was as follows: i) a presumable eruption at 07:29 UT accompanied by a not reported M1.2 class flare probably associated with the onset of a first southeastern CME (CME1), which most likely is not responsible for the superstorm; ii) a confined eruption (without a CME) at 07:41 UT (M3.2 flare) that destabilized the large filament; iii) the filament acceleration around 07:56 UT; iv) the bifurcation of the eruptive filament that transformed into a large “cloud”; v) an M3.9 flare in AR 10501 associated to this transformation. The transformation of the filament could be due to the interaction of the eruptive filament with the magnetic field in the neighborhood of a null point, located at a height of about 100 Mm above the complex formed by ARs 10501, 10503, and their environment. The CORONAS-F/SPIRIT telescope observed the cloud in 304 Å as a large Y-shaped darkening, which moved from the bifurcation region across the solar disk to the limb. The masses and kinematics of the cloud and the filament were similar. Remnants of the filament were not clearly observed in the second southwestern CME (CME2), previously regarded as a source of the 20 November geomagnetic storm. These facts do not support a simple scenario, in which the interplanetary magnetic cloud is considered as a flux rope formed from a structure initially associated with the pre-eruption filament in AR 10501. Observations suggest a possible additional eruption above the bifurcation region close to solar disk center between 08:07 and 08:17 UT, which could be the source of the 20 November superstorm.

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Notes

  1. Hereafter the error ranges correspond to uncertainties in opacity measurements. Masses estimated in terms of this approximation agree with those estimated by means of different methods within a factor of 2. The accuracy of relative variations of masses estimated from single-wavelength images is considered to be considerably higher.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Viktoria Kurt for the CORONAS-F/SONG data, L. Kashapova and S. Kalashnikov for the assistance in data processing, and I. Kuzmenko for useful discussions. We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for valuable recommendations to improve the paper. We thank the instrumental teams of the Kanzelhöhe Solar Observatory; TRACE and CORONAS-F missions; MDI, EIT, and LASCO on SOHO (ESA & NASA); the USAF RSTN Radio Solar Telescope Network; and the GOES satellites for the data used here.

This study was supported by the Russian Foundation of Basic Research under grants 11-02-00757, 11-02-01079, 12-02-00008, 12-02-92692, and 12-02-00037, the Program of basic research of the RAS Presidium No. 22, and the Russian Ministry of Education and Science under State Contract 16.518.11.7065. The research was also partly supported by the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under the grant agreement eHeroes (project No. 284461), www.eheroes.eu .

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics SB RAS, Lermontov St. 126A, Irkutsk, 664033, Russia

    V. V. Grechnev, A. M. Uralov & G. V. Rudenko

  2. P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute, Leninsky Pr., 53, Moscow, 119991, Russia

    V. A. Slemzin

  3. Pushkov Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radio Wave Propagation (IZMIRAN), Troitsk, Moscow Region, 142190, Russia

    I. M. Chertok & B. P. Filippov

  4. IGAM/Kanzelhöhe Observatory, Institute of Physics, UNI Graz, Styria, Austria

    M. Temmer

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  1. V. V. Grechnev
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Grechnev, V.V., Uralov, A.M., Slemzin, V.A. et al. A Challenging Solar Eruptive Event of 18 November 2003 and the Causes of the 20 November Geomagnetic Superstorm. I. Unusual History of an Eruptive Filament. Sol Phys 289, 289–318 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-013-0316-6

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