Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
Dec 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufmng31a1183n&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #NG31A-1183
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
7500 Solar Physics, Astrophysics, And Astronomy, 7513 Coronal Mass Ejections (2101), 7524 Magnetic Fields, 7529 Photosphere, 7974 Solar Effects
Scientific paper
More and more twisted magnetic flux tubes are being identified in the solar active regions of solar cycle 23 utilizing imagery from high resolution satellite instrumentation, such as TRACE, Hinode, and SOHO/MDI. The twisted flux tubes carry energy and helicity via the Poynting Flux from below the photosphere up into the corona, where much of it is stored in the non-potentiality of the fields, many times visible in the form of sigmoidal and anti-sigmoidal shapes, until dissipation occurs mostly following eruptive events. The twisted flux tubes are easily observed and measured in TRACE whitelight in cross section as sunspots at the photosphere, which rotate about their umbral centers. The first results presented at the 2007 Fall AGU from a statistical study on the number of rotating sunspots showed that almost all of the measurable sunspots during the solar maximum year of 2000 were rotating. Here we extend the study to include halo coronal mass ejections (CMEs) observed by SOHO/LASCO, of which 80% are associated with rotating sunspots and twisted magnetic flux tubes in 2000. Many of the CMEs, consisting of very energetic particles normally captured within a magnetic cloud of twisted flux tubes, accelerate out into the heliosphere where the Earth and its magnetic fields can encounter them, causing large geomagnetic events, such as geomagnetic storms, Solar Particle Events (SPEs), and other space weather effects. The amount of twist, or helicity, and its directionality may play important roles in solar eruptions and in the CME's interaction with the magnetosphere. Within the next year the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) will launch and the HMI and AIA instruments will be available to observe the rotating sunspots and twisted magnetic flux tubes in greater detail than is currently being done to improve our understanding of these processes. Examples of such events and topological features will be shown and discussed with respect to the role that twisted magnetic flux tubes play in topological space weather forecasting. This work was supported by NASA under the TRACE contract NAS5-38099.
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