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Predicting Extreme Solar Flare Events Using Lu and Hamilton Avalanche Model

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Abstract

Solar flares are the most powerful events in the solar atmosphere, releasing a huge amount of energy in a few minutes. Any progress in predicting when a flare of a big magnitude will occur is extremely important to evaluate the risk related to space weather. The Lu and Hamilton (Astrophys. J. Lett. 380, L89, 1991) self-organized criticality (SOC) model for solar flares is the one most conspicuous amongst the several avalanche models for flares that have been developed in the last 30 years. It has been very successful in reproducing some of the characteristic features of observed flares (e.g. probability density function of flare energy) and in the last years has been explored as a way of predicting extreme flaring events.

In this work, we study the predicting capabilities of Lu and Hamilton model by assessing the proximity to stability of the 2D lattice and studying the influence of the lattice structure in the generation of large avalanches. We find that the mean value of the lattice nodes bears enough information to predict large avalanches in more than half of the cases, making it a reliable precursor for forecasting purposes.

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Acknowledgements

Research reported in this publication was supported by Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica grant PICT-1707-2015 and Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Ténicas PIP 11220150100324CO.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. INFIP, UBA CONICET, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina

    L. F. Morales

  2. Departamento de Física, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina

    L. F. Morales

  3. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cieníficas y Técnicas, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina

    N. A. Santos

  4. Departamento de Ciencias de la Atmósfera y los Océanos, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina

    N. A. Santos

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  1. L. F. Morales
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This article belongs to the Topical Collection:

Towards Future Research on Space Weather Drivers

Guest Editors: Hebe Cremades and Teresa Nieves-Chinchilla

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Morales, L.F., Santos, N.A. Predicting Extreme Solar Flare Events Using Lu and Hamilton Avalanche Model. Sol Phys 295, 155 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-020-01713-0

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