Carrington, 1859

CARRINGTON, CHAPMAN AND OTHER GIANTS (Von HUMBOLDT, MAUNDER, CHREE AND BARTELS): HAVE WE ASSIMALATED ALL THEY TOLD US ABOUT SPACE

WEATHER?

Bruce T. Tsurutani*

Jet Propulsion Laboratory

California Institute of technology

Pasadena, California 91109

*Collaborators: W.D. Gonzalez, G.S. Lakhina, E. Echer and O.P. Verkhoglyadova

Carrington, 1859Carrington MNRS, 1859

“Description of a Singular Appearance seen in the Sun on September 1, 1859”

By R.C. Carrington, Esq. (MNRA, 20, 13, 1859)

“Mr. Carrington exhibited at the November meeting of the Society and pointed out that a moderate but very marked disturbance took place at about 11:20 AM, September 1st, of short duration; and that towards four hours after midnight there commenced a great magnetic storm, ……….”“While contemporary occurrence may deserve nothing, he would not have it supposed that he even leans towards hastily connecting them. “One swallow does not make a summer”. “

.

Carrington gave us gave us information to determine the average speed of the CME. It was not “politically correct” to relate solar and geomagnetic phenomena at the time (due to Lord Kelvin) .

The October 28 , 2003 “Halloween” AR

The 1972 Event

Big Solar Events

• Some “big solar and interplanetary events” are the Carrington 1859 flare, the August 1972 event and the Halloween 2003 events. What do they have in common?

• All flares were associated with magnetic ARs.• All took place after solar maximum.

• See Svestka ASR, 1995

> X10 flares

N. Gopalswamy, personal comm., 2009

• Large flares tend to occur late in a solar cycle (Svestka ASR 1995; Gopalswamy, personal comm., 2009).

• How to explain the above: there might be more beta-gamma-delta regions (Kuenzel, AN, 1960; Sammis, Tang and Zirin, ApJ 2000) in this phase? (M. Wheatland, personal comm., 2009)

• A plus: the ARs would be closest to the equator (J. Harvey, personal comm., 2009).

Total Energy from Solar/Stellar Flares

September 1, 1859 Flare

E = possibly 1032 ergs (K. Harvey, personal comm., 2001)

Is This The Most Energetic Flare?

August 1972 Flare

E ≈ 1032 – 1033 ergs (Lin and Hudson, Sol. Phys., 50, 153, 1976)

June 1, 1991 Flare

E ≈ 1034 ergs (Kane, et al., Astro. J., 446, L47, 1995)

What is the Maximum Flare energy?

E = 1035 ergs? (See Schrijver, ASR, 2009)

Is Solar Flare Energy the Most Important Parameter (for magnetic storms)?

• Answer: not necessarily

The most important quantity is the interplanetary electric field: E =V x B ~ V2

GoVnzalez et al. GRL, 2001

Gonzalez et al., GRL 1998

Max Vsw = 3000 km/s? Gopalswamy et al. JGR 2005

The Sept 1-2 1859 Carrington Storm

Low-latitude Auroras: The Magnetic Storm of 1-2 September 1859

D.S. Kimball (University of Alaska), 1960

“Red glows were reported as visible from within 23° of the geomagnetic equator in both north and south hemispheres during the display of September 1-2”

D.S. Kimball, a colleague of S. Chapman wrote a comprehensive detailed report of the aurora during the Carrington storm (it is a GI/Univ. Alaska “internal report”).

“Hand” measurements taken from a Grubb magnetometer. The magnetometer was “hightechnology” at the time and the manual for calibration does not have a sketch of it.

From a plasmapause location of L=1.3 (auroral data: Kimball, 1960),

we can estimate the magnetospheric electric field.

The electric potential (Volland, 1973; Stern, 1975; Nishida, 1978) for

charged particles is:

Where and are radial distance and azimuthal angle measured

counterclockwise from solar direction

M – dipole moment

- particle charge and magnetic moment

Therefore:

322 /sin// qrMRrArkR EE

,q mmVEmag /20~

Modern day knowledge plus older observations allowed us to estimate the storm E field

Extreme Magnetic Storm of September 1-2, 1859

• The storm was the most intense in recorded history. Auroras were

seen from Hawaii and Santiago.

• SYM-H is estimated to be ~ -1760 nT, consistent with the Colaba

local noon response of ΔH = 1600 ± 10 nT

(In recent years we have only had the 1989 storm : Dst = -589 nT)

Is this the most intense storm that has taken place?

Ans: Most probably not.

Maximum Magnetic Storm Intensity?

• Dst ~ -2500 nT (Vasyliunas, 2008)

• Have there been other recent events that might have surpassed the 1859 event under different conditions?

Ans: Yes

THE AUGUST 1972 SUPER FLARE/ICME

• The ICME took only 14 hours to reach the Earth (Vsw = 2850

km/s. Vaisberg and Zastenker, 1976; Zastenker et al., 1978). The

1859 ICME took 17 hrs to reach 1 AU.

Tsurutani et al. JGR 1992

MC: R. Lepping, private comm., 2005

4 major Bs intervals

3 storm main phasesStorm main phaseGeomagnetic Quiet

Removal of the radial and corotational delays indicate that the Pioneer 10Bz features and geomagnetic activity at Earth line up.

INTERPLANETARY EVENT OF 7-8 NOVEMBER, 2004: AR ASSOCIATION

3 Forward Shocks

Two reverse waves

Tsurutani et al., GRL, 2008

CAN WE PREDICT WHEN THE NEXT ONE WILL OCCUR IN A STATISTICAL SENSE?

Predictions of greater intensity magnetic storms requires either: 1) full understanding of the physical processes involved, or 2) good empirical statistics of the tail of the energy distributions.

• The statistics for extreme events are poor. We are making progress on understanding physical limitations.

Cannot predict tail distributions

What Would the

Consequences Be if a

1859-type ICME Hit Today?

1989 Storm Consequence

BEV

BE

BE

Plasmasheet

ESW

BVSW

Prompt Penetration Electric Fields(PPEFs) and Their Effects: A Global Scenario

Tsurutani et al., JGR, 2004

Initiation of the Magnetic Storm RCNegative Ionospheric Storm

Positive Ionospheric Storm

106 Log N (cm-3)

300

h (km)

300

106

h (km)

Log N (cm-3)

Quiet

Creation of a new ionosphere: TEC enhancement

Solar photoionization creates a new ionosphere

Uplifted plasma moved to region of lower recombination time scales

CHAMP GPS

Mannucci et al. GRL, 2005Mannucci et al. GRL 2005

The Oct 30-31, 2003 Superstorm

Mannucci et al. GRL 2005

Dayside IonosphericSuperfountain

Satellite Drag

With O+ ions being rapidly uplifted, one can expect corresponding uplift of neutrals by drag forces (ion-neutral drag).

For the October 30-31 superstorm neutral densities at ~370 km altitude could be increased by up to 60% of the quiet time values and that at ~600 km by up to a factor of 7.

Precipitation in the auroral zones lead to enhanced ionospheric heating and increased satellite drag (Thayer et al., GRL, 2008).

These two effects should be modeled for an 1859 type storm.

Effects During the Carrington Storm

• Arcing from exposed wires set fires.

• Unpowered telegraph lines carried signals (Loomis, Am. J. Sci., 1861)

• Everything was “low tech” at the time.

Effects Today?

• Today one could certainly expect outages of major power grids (Severe Space Weather Events, NRC Workshop report, Nat. Acad. Press, 2008).

• MEO and GEO Satellites disabled, LEO satellites deorbited (Odenwald et al., ASR 2006).

Loomis, Am. J. Sci., 1861

Thank you very much for your attention.

Some Reflection on Works Done by Von Humboldt, Maunder, Chree and Bartels

• Recurrent (~27 day) geomagnetic activity: Maunder (1904)

• Put on a sound mathematical basis: Chree (1912)

• “Invisible” magnetically active regions, “M-regions”: Bartels (1934)

• “Magnetisches Ungewitter”, Von Humboldt (1810)

Coronal hole

DECLINING PHASE OF SOLAR CYCLE

McComas et al. GRL 2003

THE SOLAR WIND DURING THE DECLINING PHASE OF THE SOLAR CYCLE

Large polar coronalholes

HSSs

Nonlinear( ΔB/B ~ 1-2)

Alfvén waves

Tsurutani et al., Nonl.Proc. Geophys., 2005

BSBs

HILDCAA

Tsurutani and Gonzalez, PSS, 1987

Tsurutani et al., Wave Inst. Spa Plas., 1979

Chorus due to Injection of T┴/T|| > 1 Anisotropic 10-100 keV Electrons

Burton and Holzer JGR 1968

Chorus “element” duration ~ 0.1 to 0.5 s

High-speed stream

Tsurutani et al., JGR, 2006

HILDCAA

Relativistic ~400 keV electrons

Tsurutani et al., JGR 2006

Chorus

PC5s

Kasahara et al. GRL 2008

>30 keV electrons

Chorus

2.5 Mev electrons

D. Baker, 2006

2-6 MeV electron peak occurrenceoccurs in solar cycle declining phase whenHSSs dominate

The energy input into the magnetosphere can be higher during the declining phase of the solar cycle than during solar maximum

CIR storm “recovery” phases can last ~25 days Tsurutani et al., JGR, 1995

~25 day HILDCAAs

Kozyra et al. 2006

• Our scientific “giants” could not have envisaged the long chain of physical connections: M-regions, high speed solar wind streams, embedded Alfvén waves, magnetic reconnection at Earth, nightside plasma injections, chorus and PC5 wave generation, relativistic electron acceleration, NOx production, and Ozone destruction.

THE END