J/ApJ/797/50      Global energetics of solar flares. I.      (Aschwanden+, 2014)

Global energetics of solar flares. I. Magnetic energies. Aschwanden M.J., Xu Y., Jing J. <Astrophys. J., 797, 50 (2014)> =2014ApJ...797...50A 2014ApJ...797...50A
ADC_Keywords: Sun ; Magnetic fields ; Ultraviolet Keywords: magnetic fields; Sun: flares; Sun: UV radiation Abstract: We present the first part of a project on the global energetics of solar flares and coronal mass ejections that includes about 400 M- and X-class flares observed with Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) and Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). We calculate the potential (Ep), the nonpotential (Enp) or free energies (Efree=Enp-Ep), and the flare-dissipated magnetic energies (Ediss). We calculate these magnetic parameters using two different NLFFF codes: the COR-NLFFF code uses the line-of-sight magnetic field component Bz from HMI to define the potential field, and the two-dimensional (2D) coordinates of automatically detected coronal loops in six coronal wavelengths from AIA to measure the helical twist of coronal loops caused by vertical currents, while the PHOT-NLFFF code extrapolates the photospheric three-dimensional (3D) vector fields. We find agreement between the two codes in the measurement of free energies and dissipated energies within a factor of ≲3. The size distributions of magnetic parameters exhibit powerlaw slopes that are approximately consistent with the fractal-diffusive self-organized criticality model. The magnetic parameters exhibit scaling laws for the nonpotential energy, Enp∝Ep1.02, for the free energy, Efree∝Ep1.7 and Efree∝Bφ1.0L1.5, for the dissipated energy, Ediss∝Ep1.6 and Ediss∝Efree0.9 , and the energy dissipation volume, V∝Ediss1.2. The potential energies vary in the range of Ep=1x1031-4x1033erg, while the free energy has a ratio of Efree/Ep~1%-25%. The Poynting flux amounts to Fflare~5x108-1010erg/cm2/s during flares, which averages to FAR~6x106erg/cm2/s during the entire observation period and is comparable with the coronal heating rate requirement in active regions. Description: The data set we are analyzing for this project on the global energetics of flares includes all M- and X-class flares observed with the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) during the first 3.5yr of the mission (2010 June 1 to 2014 January 31), which amounts to 399 flare events. Magnetic energies are determined for events that have a heliographic longitude of ≲45° (177 events), of which 5 events contained incomplete or corrupted Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) data, so that we are left with 172 events suitable for magnetic data analysis. The analyzed SDO data set includes EUV images observed with the AIA, as well as magnetograms from the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI). The SDO started observations on 2010 March 29 and has produced essentially continuous data of the full Sun since then. File Summary: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FileName Lrecl Records Explanations -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ReadMe 80 . This file table3.dat 89 173 Magnetic energy parameters calculated with the COR-NLFFF code for 172 M and X-class flares wuth a longitude difference of <45 degrees to the central meridian -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- See also: J/ApJ/802/53 : Global energetics of solar flares. II. (Aschwanden+, 2015) J/A+A/574/A37 : Movies of 2012-10-16 solar flare (Dalmasse+, 2015) J/ApJ/774/L27 : Solar flares predictors (Yang+, 2013) J/ApJ/759/69 : Solar electron events (1995-2005) with WIND/3DP (Wang+, 2012) J/ApJ/757/94 : Solar flares observed with GOES and AIA (Aschwanden, 2012) J/ApJ/747/L41 : Solar flares probabilities (Bloomfield+, 2012) J/A+A/304/563 : Cool X-ray flares of Sun with GOES (Phillips+, 1995) http://aia.lmsal.com/ : Atmospheric Imaging Assembly home page http://www.lmsal.com/~aschwand/RHESSI/flare_energetics.html : Global Flare Energetics Survey home page project Byte-by-byte Description of file: table3.dat -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bytes Format Units Label Explanations -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1- 3 I3 --- Seq [3/399] Solar flare number 5- 14 A10 "YYYY/MM/DD" Fl.date Date of flare start 16- 20 A5 "h:m" Fl.time Time of flare start 22- 25 A4 --- Cl GOES class (M1-X5.4) 27- 32 A6 --- Pos Heliographic position 34- 36 F3.1 deg Angle [1/8] Magnetic field misalignment angle µ 38- 41 I4 10+23J Ep [85/3949] Potential energy; 10+30erg 43- 45 I3 10+23J e_Ep [3/788] Uncertainty in Ep 47- 49 I3 10+23J Efree [1/951] Free energy; 10+30erg 51- 53 I3 10+23J e_Efree [0/324] Uncertainty in Efree 55- 59 F5.3 --- Ratio [0/0.9] Energy ratio; Efree/Ep 61- 64 I4 10+23J Ediss [0/1546] Dissipated energy; 10+30erg 66- 68 I3 10+23J e_Ediss [0/224] Uncertainty in Ediss 70- 73 I4 1.39x10+20W Pdiss [0/1021] Peak dissipation rate; in 10+30erg/0.2hr unit 75- 77 I3 --- e_Pdiss [0/222] Uncertainty in Pdis 79- 81 I3 Mm L [0/236] Length scale (in 1000km) 83- 84 I2 Mm e_L [0/16] Uncertainty in L 86- 89 F4.2 h T [0.08/4.1] Duration -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- History: From electronic version of the journal References: Aschwanden et al. Paper I. 2014ApJ...797...50A 2014ApJ...797...50A This catalog Aschwanden et al. Paper II. 2015ApJ...802...53A 2015ApJ...802...53A Cat. J/ApJ/802/53 Aschwanden et al. Paper III. 2016ApJ...832...27A 2016ApJ...832...27A Cat. J/ApJ/832/27 Aschwanden M.J. Paper IV. 2016ApJ...831..105A 2016ApJ...831..105A Cat. J/ApJ/831/105
(End) Greg Schwarz [AAS], Emmanuelle Perret [CDS] 22-Jul-2015
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