2016/02/08 by Astrid M. Veronig, Astrid Veronig, W. Pötzi +3
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Atmospheric Ozone and Climate #Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics #astro-ph.SR
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1602.02721
Accepted for "Ground-based Solar Observations in the Space Instrumentation Era", Proceedings of the Coimbra Solar Physics Meeting 2015, ASP Conference Series, Eds. I. Dorotovic, C. Fischer, and M. Temmer; 16pp
arxiv created 2016/02/08 · arxiv updated 2016/02/09
Monitoring of the Sun and its activity is a task of growing importance in the frame of space weather research and awareness. Major space weather disturbances at Earth have their origin in energetic outbursts from the Sun: solar flares, coronal mass ejections and associated solar energetic particles. In this review we discuss the importance and complementarity of ground-based and space-based observations for space weather studies. The main focus is drawn on ground-based observations in the visible range of the spectrum, in particular in the diagnostically manifold Hα spectral line, which enables us to detect and study solar flares, filaments, filament eruptions, and Moreton waves. Existing Hα networks such as the GONG and the Global High-Resolution Hα Network are discussed. As an example of solar observations from space weather research to operations, we present the system of real-time detection of Hα flares and filaments established at Kanzelhöhe Observatory (KSO; Austria) in the frame of the ESA Space Situational Awareness programme. During the evaluation period 7/2013 - 11/2015, KSO provided 3020 hours of real-time Hα observations at the SWE portal. In total, 824 Hα flares were detected and classified by the real-time detection system, including 174 events of Hα importance class 1 and larger. For the total sample of events, 95% of the automatically determined flare peak times lie within ±5 min of the values given in the official optical flares reports (by NOAA and KSO), and 76% of the start times. The heliographic positions determined are better than ±5^∘. The probability of detection of flares of importance 1 or larger is 95%, with a false alarm rate of 16%. These numbers confirm the high potential of automatic flare detection and alerting from ground-based observatories.