The Post-Coronal Mass Ejection Solar Atmosphere and Radio Noise Storm Activity

Abstract

We carried out a statistical study of solar radio noise storms whose onset was in the aftermath of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that occurred during 1997-2004, the first half of present solar cycle 23. The work is an attempt to understand the post-CME corona through observations of noise storms since the latter are considered to be closely related to structural changes there. The radio events were taken as the starting point for our study, and details about start time and location were available for 340 of them. We imposed the following conditions to verify the association between the above two phenomena: (1) the noise storm must have occurred ≤24 hr from the onset of a CME and (2) the central position angle of the CME must be located inside an angular span of ±45° with respect to the noise storm. We found that 196/340 noise storms were associated with CMEs. More interestingly, the time interval between CME liftoff and noise storm onset in all the above cases was ≤13 hr. We suggest that this represents the upper bound of the timescale over which coronal magnetic field reorganization had taken place in the aftermath of the aforementioned 196 noise storm associated CMEs. We also found that for a particular CME, the above temporal cutoff depends on its kinetic energy. Overall, it varies inversely with the logarithm of CME kinetic energy. © 2007. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.