Improving MAGagnetogram (MAG4) Forecasting of Severe Space Weather Drivers by Measuring Magnetic Nonpotentiality of Active Regions Using HMI/SDO Vector Magnetograms

改进空间天气驱动因素的预报具有广泛的社会影响。鉴于人类对卫星的依赖不断增加，太阳耀斑和日冕物质抛射造成的严重空间天气可能危及卫星，这项研究具有高度的重要性和优先地位，而且十分紧迫。其他更广泛的影响包括提高了对对电网和变压器、卫星和太空中的人类造成损害的地磁风暴警报的准确性。这项为期三年的项目的重点是确定驱动太阳爆炸事件的磁参数。太阳耀斑和日冕物质抛射是空间天气的主要驱动因素。对其发生概率和相对大小的预测，对于保护地球空间环境中的国家资产至关重要。耀斑和日冕物质抛射都是日冕磁场中储存的能量爆炸释放的结果。释放的自由磁能是超过源极有源区(AR)的势场构型的能量。ARs的无势可以从各种扭转参数、自由能参数和尺寸参数中推断出来，其中大多数参数都需要矢量磁图(磁场的所有三个分量)来测量。该团队将使用HMI矢量磁图来测量震源ARs的各种非势能参数，并使用他们之前开发的方法确定参数或它们的组合，以实现最佳预测。SDO/HMI矢量磁图的积分是对目前使用SOHO/MDI的MAG4预报能力的改进。此外，该项目还将在现有的太阳耀斑数据库中加入活动区日冕物质抛射历史，并试图找出日冕物质抛射速度/宽度与磁场参数之间的关系。

Improving the forecasts of the drivers of space weather has broad social impact. Given the continuously increasing dependency of humanity on satellites, which can be endangered by severe space weather caused by solar flares and CMEs, this research is of high importance and priority and is urgent. Additional broader impact includes the improved accuracy in the alert for geomagnetic storms causing damages to e.g., power grids and transformers, satellites and humans in space.This three year project is focused on identifying the magnetic parameters that drive solar explosive events. Solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are the primary drivers of space weather. Forecasts of their probability of occurrence and relative magnitude, are critical for the protection of national assets in the geospace environment. Both flares and CMEs are the results of explosive release of energy stored in the coronal magnetic field. The free magnetic energy released is energy in excess of the potential magnetic field configuration of the source active region (AR). The nonpotentiality of ARs can be inferred from various twist parameters, free-energy proxies and size parameters, most of which require vector magnetograms (all three components of magnetic field) for their measurement. The team will use HMI vector magnetograms to measure various nonpotentiality parameters of source ARs and determine the parameter or combination of them for best forecasting using a method they have previously developed. The integration of SDO/HMI vector magnetograms is an improvement on the forecasting capability of MAG4 which currently uses SOHO/MDI. Additionally, the project will add active region CME histories into the existing solar flare database and try to find out relationship between the CME speed/width and the magnetic parameters.