ISCS WORKING GROUP 3 PROJECTS
I) Meetings:
FIRST ISCS WORKSHOP: 1998
The first ISCS Workshop was held in Nagoya, Japan in July 1998. At this time
the working groups met for the first time. The papers presented by the WG3
participants are included in a volume of Advances in Space Research devoted to
the ISCS meeting to be published soon.
SHINE WORKSHOPS: 1999, 2000, 2001
A number of ISCS WG3 members have participated in the SHINE Workshops held in
Boulder Colorado in June 1999, Lake Tahoe in June 2000, and Snowmass, CO in
June 2001. D. Webb is on the SHINE Steering Committee and has helped to
organize each of these meetings.
SHINE COLLABORATIONS
Webb also helps organize the solar and heliospheric aspects of SHINE
Community-wide Collaborations. At present there are two such collaborations:
1) The Joint SHINE-GEM-CEDAR Magnetic Storms Campaign. The focus of the
campaign is on the Geoeffectiveness of Coronal Mass Ejections. The goal is to
compare and contrast a small number of well-observed magnetic cloud events to
isolate and understand important science issues associated with the generation
of CMEs, their association with interplanetary magnetic clouds, the interaction
of magnetic clouds with the interplanetary medium, and the response of the
terrestrial environment Presently we are studying 3 halo CME-storm events.
Meetings have been held in conjunction with the SHINE, GEM and CEDAR annual
meetings in 1999 and 2001 and at the Spring AGU in 2000 in Washington, DC., at
which we organized a special session.
2) The SCOSTEP S-RAMP September 1999 Space Weather Month. The purpose of this
campaign is to study one or several space weather events from their initiation
at the sun to their impacts at the Earth including effects on space-based and
ground-based worldwide assets and assessment of the accuracy of forecasting
techniques. Special features of this campaign are: 1) Broad international
cooperation 2) As complete as possible space-based and ground-based
observations of the event. 3) Encouraging involvement of the user communities
both in the planning and execution of the campaign. 4) Encouraging
participation of the forecasting community. The first workshop on results from
the campaign was held at the First S-RAMP Conference in Sapporo, Japan in
October 2000. Electronic Workshops for the post-event analysis phase are being
developed using the Univ. of Michigan SPARC system.
IUGG/IAGA: 1999
WG3 was a co-convener of Symposium GA4.02 on
"CMEs, Eruptions and Flares:
Onsets and Relationships" at the IUGG/IAGA
meeting held in July 1999 in Birmingham, England. This session was chaired by
B. Schmieder and D. Webb, G. Simnett and S. Plunkett, all WG3 members, were
co-conveners. The papers from this symposium were published in a special issue
of JASTP, vol. 62, no. 16, November 2000. Schmieder, Webb and B. Thompson were
guest editors.
ISCS01: 2001
WG3 helped to organize the main sessions and speakers for the second ISCS
Workshop held in Longmont, CO in June 2001. We also met jointly with WG2 in
separate breakout meetings. A report on the WG3 aspects of these meetings is
here.
FUTURE MEETINGS
WG3 will participate in the following forthcoming meetings. Others may be added
in the future.
- SHINE Workshop, Banff, Canada, August 2002.
- Third ISCS Workshop,
Tatranska, Lomnica, Slovakia, June 2003.
II) Individual Projects:
Simon Plunkett:
Working on statistical studies of the relationship between
EUV and white light observations of CMEs (mainly spatial distributions in
latitude and longitude) and a detailed study of the large filament eruption and
CME on June 2, 1998. This study uses ground-based H-alpha observations from
Ondrejov and SOHo EIT and LASCO data. Published in Solar Physics, 194, 371,
2000.
Harjit Ahluwalia:
Projects: 1) Our prediction for Solar Cycle 23 is right on the mark! It
followed cycle 20 very closely since its onset in May 1996; for the last 7
months its timeline has veered closer to that of cycle 17 as we predicted in
our JGR ( v.103, p.12103, 1998) paper. Last month the activity was high which
may mean that solar max may occur in the later half of this year(?). 2) We
have traced the cause of 3 cycle quasiperiodicity in Ap to IMF (cc = 0.8). Not
surprisingly the best correlation (cc = 0.9) is obtained between Ap and BV^2.
3) Two peaks per SSN cycle structure in Ap data is traced to the solar polar
field reversal epochs; the shorter the time for the reversal the deeper the
minimum separating the two Ap peaks.
Takeo Kosugi:
1) Yohkoh has been fully operational and is continuously observing a variety of
coronal activity including flares and arcade formation events. Please visit our
homepage at: http://www.solar.isas.ac.jp.
2) The Yohkoh HXT (Hard X-ray Telescope) Group has published a databook "The
Yohkoh HXT Image Catalogue, October 1991 - August 1998". This databook is
available upon request to the Nobeyama Radio Observatory or to
kosugi@laputa2.solar.isas.ac.jp.
Igor Veselovsky:
Projects involving Dissipative CME Processes. The main results of this work are
as follows: 1) Macroscopic magnetohydrodynamic and microscopic kinetic
processes are essential in different proportions for eruptive processes
initiated in the solar atmosphere at low/high altitudes respectively. 2)
Radiative dominated (flare-like) and solar wind dominated (CME-like) eruptions
are delimited by the specific dimensionless parameter "Ve" - the inverse ratio
of the Cox-Tucker losses function to the solar wind energy flow density
associated with a transient event under consideration. 3) A free magnetic
energy of the corona and electric currents there are rather independent
dynamical factors which are important for the CME initiation and
self-organization processes. The evolving magnetic structures in the
photosphere are also important but not sufficient for predictions of this
process in all cases, as it is often believed. Governing equations are
nonlinear and solutions may have or not have current sheets and current jets
needed for the initiation. In short, the dynamical photospheric fields does not
determine the coronal processes uniquely and additional information is needed.
Two other works: 1) Delannee C., Koutchmy S., Veselovsky I.S., Zhukov
A.N.(1998) Coronal Plasmoid Dynamics. I. Dissipative MHD Approach. Astronomy
and Astrophys.V.329.#3. 1111- 1118. Observations of the coronal plasmoid during
the 1991 solar eclipse with CFHT telescope are interpreted based on the
Dissipative MHD theory. Magnetic stresses are shown to be viable candidates for
the driving forces of the coronal plasmoid.
2) Veselovsky I.S., Dmitriev A.V., Suvorova A.V.(1998). Average SolarWind and
Interplanetary Magnetic Field Parameters at the Earth's Orbit During the Last
Three Solar Cycles. Solar System Research. V.32.#4.310-315. Regular as well as
irregular long-term variations of the heliospheric plasma and magnetic field
parameters are analyzed using different statistical and spectral methods. Solar
rotation and solar cycle manifestations are evaluated together with clear
longer term trends and chaotic components in all parameters. The five - year
wave in the solar wind density with larger values just before and after the
solar cycle maxima is found to be the dominant feature over the 11-year wave,
which is less pronounced for the solar wind density at the Earth' orbit. The
interpretation is given based on concepts of the solar wind origins mainly from
magnetically open, closed and intermittent structures on the Sun.
Dave Webb:
Projects: 1) Organization of above meetings and campaigns on space weather
subjects. 2) Paper on "The relationship of Halo CMEs, Magnetic Clouds, and
Magnetic Storms" by Webb, Cliver, Crooker, St. Cyr and Thompson published in
JGR, 105, 7491, 2000. 3) Study on comparing solar arcade and filament and
magnetic cloud/flux rope structures for the May 12-15, 1997 halo CME-cloud-
storm. Paper published in JGR, 105, 27,251, 2000. 4) Study of spatial and
temporal overlap of two CMEs in white light, EUV and soft Xray images. 5)
Study of evidence of magnetic disconnection of field lines trailing LASCO CMEs.
6) Studies comparing geoeffectiveness of filament eruptions and coronal
arcades. 7) Study comparing halo CMEs with magnetic clouds.
If you have project updates to add, email a brief summary to Dave Webb or
George Simnett.
Last revised: September 13, 2001