Space Weather Utilities of Solar Flare Statistics based on Solar Cycle 23: Sunspot, Flare, and Coronal Mass Ejection

When a flare occurs above a sunspot, there could be an eruption to the interplanetary space as known as coronal mass ejection (CME). Prediction of such phenomena is a major interest of space weather researches. One problem on the space weather researches arises with an insufficient amount of data, and we have developed a method to overcome those difficulties.

Our newly developed method gives estimates of missing information based on statistics of solar cycle 23. The core of our method is an empirical interpretation of phenomena organized by three physical quantities; the area of a sunspot, the magnitude of a flare, and the association of CME. Once two of those three quantities are given, our method could estimate the last one with some errors.

With our method, the difficulties on space weather researches may be moderated. In case of time scale shortness of flare observations, which is problematic at discussions of long-term or rarely occurred activities, the magnitudes of flares in past can be estimated with sunspot areas and CME occurrences from sunspot observations (~400 years) and aurora observations in traditional manners (thousands of years) respectively. For a failed CME detection due to the observational limit, the occurrence of a CME can be answered with observations of the flare and the sunspot.

In this presentation, we will discuss how solar flare statistics of solar cycle 23 can be applied to difficulties in space weather researches and how they are relevant to the other solar cycles.