Patricia Reiff's Comment on Diagnostics for Forecasting a 'Big Event' following a CME

By: miker on: Fri., Dec. 11, 2020 11:04 AM EST (3137 Reads)

Following the fizzle of the geomagnetic 'Big Event' (G3 storm) forecast for Dec 9-11, 2020 due to the CME observed on Dec 7, Prof. Patricia Reiff at Rice University offered her thoughts on how to identify promising solar conditions to HamSCI mailing list subscribers (https://www.hamsci.org/). Quoting from Pat's email:
>> I wasn’t alarmed enough to send out a special alert to my "spacalrt" system. Why?
Well, for the *really big* events, there is a halo CME, centered and expanding uniformly around the sun, saying the CME is pointed our way AND there is a HUGE amount of "snow" on the LASCO coronagraph, from the energetic particles hitting the detector. When I heard the announcement, I immediately downloaded the coronagraph movie and saw neither of these.<<
Pat has offered specific guidance on how to diagnose these conditions in SOHO coronograph observations - See 'Read More'.
The Rice space weather forecast and information on how to subscribe to the "spacalrt" email list are available at http://mms.rice.edu/mms/forecast.php

Photo credit: SOHO LASCO C2 image from the NASA SOHO website

Continuing with Pat's text regarding the prediction of a 'Big Event' in the Dec. 9-11, 2020 timeframe:

>>
I used my free SpaceWeather software to get the movies. Download from: http://mms.rice.edu/mms/spaceweather_software.php

the LASCO coronal movies in the software are in SpaceWeather/theSunToday/InnerSolarCorona and OuterSolarCorona.
and stills can be found directly here: https://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime-images.html

gif movies can be here: https://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/gif/

Sample C2 and C3 movies of CMEs that caused a significant storm are in our software at
SpaceWeather/theViolentSun/

and similar ones can be gotten from the SOHO site at: https://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/bestofsoho/Movies/flares.html

So, don’t believe the hype until you view the C2 and C3 movies for yourself.

Our (Rice University) space weather forecast is unfortunately much shorter range (1-3 hours) but higher fidelity. Our forecast just touched Kp 4 which is pretty insignificant. The really big storms will have the Boyle Index over 250.
http://mms.rice.edu/mms/forecast.php

(you can subscribe to our "spacalrt" email list on that page.)

Note we are moving our space.rice.edu server to a different machine and there may be some interruption over the next couple of weeks.
<<

Additional comments:

For what it’s worth, we got auroras in the Houston suburbs during the March ’89 event, and only one other one I know of since then. (memory fails… maybe the halloween storm?)
The farmers all thought their neighbor’s fields were on fire from the red glow and more than one Volunteer Fire Department was called out.
A friend sent me a photo but it’s pretty dim, and it's on a slide. I should try to get it scanned I guess. Our realtime forecast using Boyle has been running since 2003 (and the halloween storm was the first Red Alert we sent out).

Also, for the general public, I have done a few talks this fall about space weather and major events (that you are welcome to link to).
It shows the examples of halo CME’s.
Here is the one from "solar week": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4saYpQIet0g

and here is a talk for the Katy Amateur Radio Society which is a bit more technical:
https://youtu.be/kiccwcLwjFc

…Pat W5TAR