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Earth-Affecting Coronal Mass Ejections Without Obvious Low Coronal Signatures

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Abstract

We present a study of the origin of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that were not accompanied by obvious low coronal signatures (LCSs) and yet were responsible for appreciable disturbances at 1 AU. These CMEs characteristically start slowly. In several examples, extreme ultraviolet (EUV) images taken by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory reveal coronal dimming and a post-eruption arcade when we make difference images with long enough temporal separations, which are commensurate with the slow initial development of the CME. Data from the EUV imager and COR coronagraphs of the Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation onboard the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, which provide limb views of Earth-bound CMEs, greatly help us limit the time interval in which the CME forms and undergoes initial acceleration. For other CMEs, we find similar dimming, although only with lower confidence as to its link to the CME. It is noted that even these unclear events result in unambiguous flux rope signatures in in situ data at 1 AU. There is a tendency that the CME source regions are located near coronal holes or open field regions. This may have implications for both the initiation of the stealthy CME in the corona and its outcome in the heliosphere.

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Notes

  1. CMEs that apparently lack the associated near-surface activity were known even from the Skylab observations, and called “spontaneous CMEs” (Wagner 1984).

  2. http://wind.nasa.gov/ICMEindex.php . See Nieves-Chinchilla et al. (2017).

  3. http://space.ustc.edu.cn/dreams/wind_icmes . See Chi et al. (2016).

  4. http://www.srl.caltech.edu/ACE/ASC/DATA/level3/icmetable2.htm . See Cane and Richardson (2003) and Richardson and Cane (2010).

  5. http://solar.gmu.edu/heliophysics/index.php/GMU_CME/ICME_List . See Hess and Zhang (2017).

  6. See http://solar.gmu.edu/heliophysics/index.php/10/08/2012_05:00:00_UTC and Webb and Nitta (2017).

  7. See http://solar.gmu.edu/heliophysics/index.php/05/31/2013_15:30:00_UTC and Webb and Nitta (2017).

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Acknowledgements

We thank the referee for detailed comments that greatly helped us improve the article. This work was motivated by scientific discussions through the International Study of Earth-affecting Solar Transient (ISEST), one of the four elements of the Variability of the Sun and Its Terrestrial Impact (VarSITI) program under the Scientific Committee on Solar Terrestrial Physics (SCOSTEP). The authors acknowledge support from NASA grant NNX17AB73G. NVN was partially supported by the NASA AIA contract NNG04EA00C and the NASA STEREO mission under NRL Contract No. N00173-02-C-2035.

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  1. Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory, Department A021S, Building 252, 3251 Hanover Street, Palo Alto, CA, 94304, USA

    Nariaki V. Nitta

  2. Space Sciences Department, The Aerospace Corporation, Los Angeles, CA, 94305, USA

    Tamitha Mulligan

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  1. Nariaki V. Nitta
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Correspondence to Nariaki V. Nitta.

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Earth-affecting Solar Transients

Guest Editors: Jie Zhang, Xochitl Blanco-Cano, Nariaki Nitta, and Nandita Srivastava

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Nitta, N.V., Mulligan, T. Earth-Affecting Coronal Mass Ejections Without Obvious Low Coronal Signatures. Sol Phys 292, 125 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-017-1147-7

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