GLOBAL ENERGETICS OF THIRTY-EIGHT LARGE SOLAR ERUPTIVE EVENTS

By A. Emslie, Brian R. Dennis, A. Shih, P. Chamberlin, R. Mewaldt, C. Moore, G. Share, A. Vourlidas, B. Welsch. 2012

311 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We have evaluated the energetics of 38 solar eruptive events observed by a variety of spacecraft instruments between 2002 February and 2006 December, as accurately as the observations allow. The measured energetic components include: (1) the radiated energy in the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite 1–8 Å band, (2) the total energy radiated from the soft X-ray (SXR) emitting plasma, (3) the peak energy in the SXR-emitting plasma, (4) the bolometric radiated energy over the full duration of the event, (5) the energy in flare-accelerated electrons above 20 keV and in flare-accelerated ions above 1 MeV, (6) the kinetic and potential energies of the coronal mass ejection (CME), (7) the energy in solar energetic particles (SEPs) observed in interplanetary space, and (8) the amount of free (non-potential) magnetic energy estimated to be available in the pertinent active region. Major conclusions include: (1) the energy radiated by the SXR-emitting plasma exceeds, by about half an order of magnitude, the peak energy content of the thermal plasma that produces this radiation; (2) the energy content in flare-accelerated electrons and ions is sufficient to supply the bolometric energy radiated across all wavelengths throughout the event; (3) the energy contents of flare-accelerated electrons and ions are comparable; (4) the energy in SEPs is typically a few percent of the CME kinetic energy (measured in the rest frame of the solar wind); and (5) the available magnetic energy is sufficient to power the CME, the flare-accelerated particles, and the hot thermal plasma.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6dd0aafe0fedb7c6a1e7fe17e184eb4029a9b22c

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Citations in the corpus

History and development of coronal mass ejections as a key player in solar terrestrial relationship (2016, background): “SOHO observations support the idea that the flare and CME are two manifestations of the same energy release (e.g., Low 1994; Harrison 1995), although the CME kinetic energy has been found to be the single largest component of the released energy (Emslie et al. 2012).”
A review of solar type III radio bursts (2014, background): “…are the most violent example of such acceleration, with vast amounts of energy released when the solar magnetic field reconfigures to a lower energy state, releasing energy on the order of 1032 ergs and accelerating up to 1036 electrons per second in the solar atmosphere (e.g. Emslie et al., 2012).”
A COMPARISON OF FLARE FORECASTING METHODS. I. RESULTS FROM THE “ALL-CLEAR” WORKSHOP (2016, background): “The soft X-ray signature (and hence magnitude) is not a direct measure of the total energy released in a reconnection event (Emslie et al. 2012), yet the parameters currently being computed are generally measures of the total energy of an active region.”
Space weather: the solar perspective (2021, background): “In cutting-edge studies performed by Emslie et al. (2004, 2012), a sample of eruptive events was investigated with respect to the energy release and its distribution into different components, concluding that about a third of the total available energy might be released in an eruptive event.”
A UNIFIED COMPUTATIONAL MODEL FOR SOLAR AND STELLAR FLARES (2015, background): “Emslie et al. (2012) estimated the energy in accelerated ions to be comparable to that of accelerated electrons in many flares.”
The standard flare model in three dimensions II: upper limit on solar flare energy (2012, background): “But current observational energy estimates imply that the kinetic energy of a CME can be the same as (Emslie et al. 2005) and up to three times higher than (Emslie et al. 2012) the bolometric energy of its associated flare.”
THE KEPLER CATALOG OF STELLAR FLARES (2016, background): “For comparison, the Sun has a g−i color of ∼0.6, and a maximum observed flare energy of ∼1032 erg (Emslie et al. 2012).”
The 1859 space weather event revisited: limits of extreme activity (2013, background): “2) and the bolometric and SXR fluences for four large (≥ X10) flares from Woods et al. (2006; re-evaluated by Emslie et al. 2012).”
Modelling Quasi-Periodic Pulsations in Solar and Stellar Flares (2018, background): “…flare energy is of the same order of magnitude as the amount of magnetic free energy, while the specific fraction is still debated in the literature (e.g. Emslie et al. 2012 reports that for large solar eruptive events, approximately 30% of the available non-potential magnetic energy is released).”