Integration of solar flare and coronal mass ejection event data

Abstract

Solar flares and coronal mass ejections are solar transient events that can impact our technological infrastructure in near-Earth and Earth environments. While related, not all flares generate CMEs and there are a limited number of resources that connect CMEs to flares and eventually to their source active regions. We present an integrated solar-flare-to-CME association dataset, along with a multi-step, data-driven spatiotemporal integration methodology for matching solar flares with coronal mass ejections. We perform a confidence-based scoring process that involves spatial and temporal data integration for integrating LASCO CME data to their solar sources. Such process is based on identifying the likely CME candidates with corresponding start and peak times of flares and the first detection time of CMEs. In addition, we check for the locations of flares (within 70 degrees) and CME principal angles as well as the width of each CME to generate spatial connections between instances. Furthermore, we use external association sources to implement a custom verification schema that provides further fidelity to our associations. We also provide an exploratory analysis demonstrating the number of associations generated after the integration. With this data resource, we connect the coronal mass ejections to their source active regions and generate a high-utility solar eruption labeling schema.