Alright all space weather enthusiasts, this is quite an interesting paper which points out factors as to why weve had less severe geomagnetic storming this cycle (24) in comparison to the last solar cycle (23). Ive also posted this in several of the aurora groups for those interested. This group of authors took CME data from the first 62 month period of each solar cycle to compare attributes such as CME velocity and width of its spread and the results were very interesting. It turns out, for a given CME speed of cycle 23, the speed of a similar one in cycle 24 had a significant difference in its spread, namely it had a higher width as seen in the first picture here, labeled Figure 2. An analysis was then started to take solar wind & magnetic field data from 1 AU, over the two 62 month periods, and extrapolated to create the same data at the beginning of the LASCO field of view, or about ~20 solar radii. The conclusion that was found was a significant drop in ambient magnetic & plasma pressure allowing for a greater spread of CMEs in cycle 24 and hence decreasing the magnetic field strength, causing the lesser severity storms for a given CME impact. This data can be seen in the second picture, labeled Figure 3. This was called anomalous behavior due to there being no current reasoning for it but it can be assumed that the decrease in overall magnetic field strength of the heliosphere in general is responsible for this behavior. More info can be found in the paper, linked here: arxiv.org/abs/1404.0252
Posted on: Wed, 02 Apr 2014 18:12:07 +0000
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