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The Wind/EPACT Proton Event Catalog (1996 – 2016)

  • Radio and Space-based Observations
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Abstract

We present the finalized catalog of solar energetic proton events detected by the Wind/EPACT instrument over the period 1996 – 2016. Onset times, peak times, peak proton intensity and onset-to-peak proton fluence are evaluated for the two available energy channels, at about 25 and 50 MeV. We describe the procedure utilized to identify the proton events and to relate them to their solar origin (in terms of flares and coronal mass ejections). The statistical relationships between the energetic protons and their origin (linear and partial correlation analysis) are reported and discussed in view of earlier findings. Finally, the different trends found in the first 8 years of Solar Cycles 23 and 24 are discussed.

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Notes

  1. https://ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/satellite/goes/datanotes.html .

  2. http://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/SEP/ .

  3. \(1~\mbox{pfu} = 1~\mbox{proton}/(\mbox{cm}^{2}\,\mbox{s}\,\mbox{sr})\).

  4. http://server.sepserver.eu/ , status: July 2017.

  5. The SEPEM 7.23 – 10.45 reference proton event list: http://dev.sepem.oma.be/help/event_ref.html .

  6. Several proton lists are reported at http://www.wdcb.ru/stp/index.en.html .

  7. http://dev.sepem.oma.be .

  8. https://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/SEP/ .

  9. As a confidence measure, one selects a threshold on the proton intensity in order to identify a new proton event, e.g. applies a factor over the standard deviation (sigma) evaluated usually during quiet-time periods.

  10. http://cdaweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/istp_public/ .

  11. Since an averaging over five data points (which are 92 seconds apart from each other) is performed, the final time resolution of the smoothed data is about 7.7 minutes.

  12. Occasionally, due to large background intensity fluctuations, the 3-sigma level requirement cannot be fulfilled and no onset time is provided, thus a notation ‘N/A’ is used.

  13. The Wind orbit can be viewed by the orbit plotting tool provided at http://cdaweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gif_walk?plot_type=wind_orbit .

  14. The correlations in SC23 (1996 – 2008) are \(0.80\pm 0.05\) at low energies (88 events) and \(0.83\pm 0.03\) at high energies (39 events). These values are consistent with the reported scatter-plot results in Miteva et al. (2017), based on the preliminary results of Wind/EPACT catalog. The correlations in SC24 (2009 – 2016) are \(0.83 \pm 0.03\) (99 events) and \(0.88\pm 0.03\) (54 events), respectively for low- and high-energy data samples.

  15. Solar Cycle 24 is still ongoing; see sunspot data provided by the World Data Center SILSO, Royal Observatory of Belgium, Brussels: http://www.sidc.be/silso/ .

  16. Since the GOES proton catalog automatically identifies the highest proton intensities, occasionally, energetic storm particles (due to local shock passages) are erroneously reported as SEP events.

  17. ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/space-weather/solar-data/solar-features/solar-flares/x-rays/goes/ .

  18. https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/solar/sgd.html .

  19. https://cdaw.gsfc.nasa.gov/CME_list/ .

  20. The SXR flare class based on GOES data is reported by ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/space-weather/solar-data/solar-features/solar-flares/x-rays/goes/ ; http://legacy-www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpmenu/indices/events.html ; http://www.solarmonitor.org ; ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/SOLAR_DATA/SGD_PDFversion/ .

  21. MPA corresponds to the position of the fastest moving segment of the CME leading edge in counterclockwise direction and is provided for all CMEs, including halo.

  22. The statistical difference between two samples is evaluated based on the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test selecting 95% confidence level.

  23. The X-class of SFs is \(10^{-4}~\mbox{W}\,\mbox{m}^{2}\) followed by M, C, B, A flare classes, which are 10 times less in flux than the previous. The number following the letter is denoting a multiplier of the SXR flux.

  24. In the period 1996 – 2016, among all SFs we found \(\lesssim 1\%\) to be of X-class and \(\sim 9\%\) of M-class. Among the CMEs, 2% are fast and 0.2% are extreme in speed.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the open data policy from the CDAWeb data base, GOES flare listings and CDAW LASCO CME catalog. The CME catalog is generated and maintained at the CDAW Data Center by NASA and the Catholic University of America in cooperation with the Naval Research Laboratory. SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA. MVCD thanks FAPESP project 2016/05254-9.

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  1. Space Research and Technology Institute, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (SRTI-BAS), 1113, Sofia, Bulgaria

    Rositsa Miteva

  2. National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics (NRIAG), 11421, Helwan, Cairo, Egypt

    Susan W. Samwel

  3. Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences, University of São Paulo (IAG-USP), 05508-090, São Paulo, Brazil

    Marcus V. Costa-Duarte

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  1. Rositsa Miteva
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Miteva, R., Samwel, S.W. & Costa-Duarte, M.V. The Wind/EPACT Proton Event Catalog (1996 – 2016). Sol Phys 293, 27 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-018-1241-5

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