Abstract
We study the association of solar flares with coronal mass ejections (CMEs) during the deep, extended solar minimum of 2007 – 2009, using extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) and white-light (coronagraph) images from the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO). Although all of the fast (v>900 km s−1), wide (θ>100∘) CMEs are associated with a flare that is at least identified in GOES soft X-ray light curves, a majority of flares with relatively high X-ray intensity for the deep solar minimum (e.g. ≳1×10−6 W m−2 or C1) are not associated with CMEs. Intense flares tend to occur in active regions with a strong and complex photospheric magnetic field, but the active regions that produce CME-associated flares tend to be small, including those that have no sunspots and therefore no NOAA active-region numbers. Other factors on scales similar to and larger than active regions seem to exist that contribute to the association of flares with CMEs. We find the possible low coronal signatures of CMEs, namely eruptions, dimmings, EUV waves, and Type III bursts, in 91 %, 74 %, 57 %, and 74 %, respectively, of the 35 flares that we associate with CMEs. None of these observables can fully replace direct observations of CMEs by coronagraphs.
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Acknowledgments
This work has been supported by the NASA STEREO mission under NRL Contract No. N00173-02-C-2035. We thank the referee for useful comments that are largely reflected in the revised manuscript. The STEREO/SECCHI data used here were produced by an international consortium of the Naval Research Laboratory (USA), Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Lab (USA), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (USA), Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (UK), University of Birmingham (UK), Max-Planck-Institut for Solar System Research (Germany), Centre Spatiale de Liège (Belgium), Institut d’Optique Théorique et Appliquée (France), and Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale (France). The USA institutions were funded by NASA, the UK institutions by the Science & Technology Facility Council (which used to be the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, PPARC), the German institutions by Deutsches Zentrum für Luftund Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR), the Belgian institutions by Belgian Science Policy Office, and the French institutions by Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). The NRL effort was also supported by the USAF Space Test Program and the Office of Naval Research.
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Nitta, N.V., Aschwanden, M.J., Freeland, S.L. et al. The Association of Solar Flares with Coronal Mass Ejections During the Extended Solar Minimum. Sol Phys 289, 1257–1277 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-013-0388-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-013-0388-3