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Interplanetary Propagation Behavior of the Fast Coronal Mass Ejection on 23 July 2012

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Abstract

The fast coronal mass ejection (CME) on 23 July 2012 caused attention because of its extremely short transit time from the Sun to 1 AU, which was shorter than 21 h. In situ data from STEREO-A revealed the arrival of a fast forward shock with a speed of more than 2200 km s−1 followed by a magnetic structure moving with almost 1900 km s−1. We investigate the propagation behavior of the CME shock and magnetic structure with the aim to reproduce the short transit time and high impact speed as derived from in situ data. We carefully measured the 3D kinematics of the CME using the graduated cylindrical shell model and obtained a maximum speed of 2580±280 km s−1 for the CME shock and 2270±420 km s−1 for its magnetic structure. Based on the 3D kinematics, the drag-based model (DBM) reproduces the observational data reasonably well. To successfully simulate the CME shock, the ambient flow speed needs to have an average value close to the slow solar wind speed (450 km s−1), and the initial shock speed at a distance of 30 R ⊙ should not exceed ≈ 2300 km s−1, otherwise it would arrive much too early at STEREO-A. The model results indicate that an extremely small aerodynamic drag force is exerted on the shock, smaller by one order of magnitude than average. As a consequence, the CME hardly decelerates in interplanetary space and maintains its high initial speed. The low aerodynamic drag can only be reproduced when the density of the ambient solar wind flow, in which the fast CME propagates, is decreased to ρ sw=1 – 2 cm−3 at the distance of 1 AU. This result is consistent with the preconditioning of interplanetary space by a previous CME.

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Notes

  1. As the shock and magnetic structure can be clearly distinguished starting from COR2 FoV, the shock acceleration profile is unreliable and was not used for further analysis.

  2. According to statistics, the CME acceleration duration and the peak acceleration value are closely related parameters that are inversely proportional.

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Acknowledgements

M.T. acknowledges the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): P20145-N16. N.V.N’s work has been supported by NSF grant AGS-1259549, NASA AIA contract NNG04EA00C, and the NASA STEREO mission under NRL Contract No. N00173-02-C-2035. We appreciate the provision of PLASTIC data supported by NASA Grant NNX13AP52G. We thank Y.D. Liu for valuable comments on the manuscript and J.G. Luhmann, as well as Y. Li and B.J. Lynch, for helpful discussions.

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  1. Kanzelhöhe Observatory/IGAM, Institute of Physics, University of Graz, Universitätsplatz 5, 8010, Graz, Austria

    M. Temmer

  2. Lockheed Martin STAR Labs, Building 252, 3251 Hanover Street, Palo Alto, CA, 94304, USA

    M. Temmer & N. V. Nitta

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  1. M. Temmer
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Temmer, M., Nitta, N.V. Interplanetary Propagation Behavior of the Fast Coronal Mass Ejection on 23 July 2012. Sol Phys 290, 919–932 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-014-0642-3

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