Accession Number:

AD1093145

Title:

The Dependence of Solar Wind Burst Size on Burst Duration and Its Invariance Across Solar Cycles 23 and 24

Descriptive Note:

Journal Article - Open Access

Corporate Author:

WARWICK UNIV COVENTRY (UNITED KINGDOM) WARWICK United Kingdom

Personal Author(s):

• Tindale,E.
• Chapman,S. C.
• Moloney,N. R.
• Watkins,N. W.

Report Date:

2018-08-22

Pagination or Media Count:

15.0

Abstract:

Time series of solar wind variables are bursty in nature. Bursts, or excursions, in the time series of solar wind parameters are associated with various transient structures in the solar wind plasma and are often the drivers of increased space weather activity in Earths magnetosphere. We define bursts by setting a threshold value of the time series and identifying how often, and for how long, it is exceeded. This allows us to study how the statistical distributions and scaling properties of burst parameters vary over solar cycles 23 and 24. We find that the distributions of burst duration and integrated burst size vary over the solar cycle and between the equivalent phases of consecutive cycles. However, there exists a single power law scaling relation between burst size and duration, with a joint areaduration scaling exponent that is independent of the solar cycle. This provides a solar cycle invariant constraint between possible sizes and durations of solar wind bursts that can occur.

Descriptors:

• solar activity
• statistical distributions
• solar wind
• solar cycle
• power spectra
• cycles
• probability density functions
• magnetosphere
• probability
• statistics
• space weather
• data sets
• brownian motion

Subject Categories:

• Astrophysics
• Statistics and Probability

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE