Annotated catalog of intense geomagnetic storms including their solar and interplanetary causes

Abstract

Geomagnetic storms are the result of interaction between Earth’s magnetic field and interplanetary magnetic field conducted by large-scale structures from the Sun, such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and stream interaction regions (SIRs). CMEs originate from closed magnetic regions on the Sun, such as active regions and quiescent filament regions. SIRs are formed in the interplanetary medium due to the fast solar wind originating from coronal holes—regions of open magnetic field lines and interacting with the slow wind ahead. Geomagnetic storms have significant space weather consequences, such as geomagnetically induced currents, atmospheric heating, ionospheric density changes and energization of Van Allen belt electrons to relativistic energies. In this paper, we describe a catalog of intense geomagnetic storms with the Dst index \(\le -\)100 nT (https://cdaw.gsfc.nasa.gov/CME_list/dst100), which is obtained from the Dst data made available online by the World Data Center, Kyoto, Japan. The catalog contains detailed information on the solar source – whether a CME or a coronal hole, including the cases that are due to a combined action of the two. The catalog also provides detailed information on the CME sources and coronal holes. We also presented some statistical results derived from the catalog.