Statistical Survey of Coronal Mass Ejections and Interplanetary Type II Bursts

Abstract

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are responsible for most severe space weather events, such as solar energetic particle events and geomagnetic storms at Earth. Type II radio bursts are slow drifting emissions produced by beams of suprathermal electrons accelerated at CME-driven shock waves propagating through the corona and interplanetary medium. Here, we report a statistical study of 153 interplanetary type II radio bursts observed by the two STEREO spacecraft between 2008 March and 2014 August. The shock associated radio emission was compared with CME parameters included in the Heliospheric Cataloguing, Analysis and Techniques Service catalog. We found that faster CMEs are statistically more likely to be associated with the interplanetary type II radio bursts. We correlate frequency drifts of interplanetary type II bursts with white-light observations  to localize radio sources with respect to CMEs. Our results suggest that interplanetary type II bursts are more likely to have a source region situated closer to CME flanks than  CME leading edge regions.