On 5-6 Aug. 2011 two short-time consecutive M-class solar flares led to profile of multiple Forbush Decreases showing the possible interaction of long-time passing of ICME.

Using HINODE/XRT, GOES, SDO/AIA observations, we study a compact C-1.4 class flare outside a major sunspot of AR 12178 on 4 October 2014. This flare is associated with a peculiar coronal jet, which is erupted in two stages in the overlying corona above the compact flaring region. At the time of flare maximum, the first stage of the jet eruption occurs above the flare energy release site, and thereafter in the second stage its magneto-plasma system interacts with the overlying distinct magnetic field domain in its vicinity to build further the typical jet plasma column.

Using high-precision photometry from the Kepler mission, we investigate patterns of spot activity on the K1-type subgiant component of KIC 11560447, a short-period late-type eclipsing binary. We tested the validity of maximum entropy reconstructions of starspots by numerical simulations. Our procedure successfully captures up to three large spot clusters migrating in longitude. We suggest a way to measure a lower limit for stellar differential rotation, using slopes of spot patterns in the reconstructed time-longitude diagram. We find solar-like differential rotation and recurrent spot activity with a long-term trend towards a dominant axisymmetric spot distribution during the period of observations.

The solar magnesium II core-to-wing ratio has been a well-studied proxy for chromospheric activity since 1978. Daily measurements at high spectral (0.1 nm) resolution began with the launch of the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) in 2003. The next generation of measurements from the Extreme Ultraviolet Sensor (EUVS) on the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite 16 (GOES-16) will add high time cadence (every 30 seconds) to the observational Mg II irradiance record. We present a comparison of the two measurements during the period of overlap.

Several observatories around the globe started regular full-disc imaging of the solar atmosphere in the Ca II K line in the early decades of the 20th century. These observations are continued today at a few sites with either old spectroheliographs or modern telescopes equipped with narrow-band filters. The Ca II K time series are unique in representing long-term variations of the Sun’s chromospheric magnetic field. However, meaningful results from their analysis require accurate processing of the available data and robust merging of the information stored in different archives. This paper provides an overview of the historical and modern full-disc Ca II K observations, with focus on their quality and the main results obtained from their analysis over the last decade.

Hemispheric asymmetry is one of the significant parameters related to the action of solar dynamo. Comparison of hemispheric activities during various phases are found out for solar cycles 12 to 23. Asymmetry of solar activity shows extremum values during the cycles 14 and 19. Lowest and highest levels of north-south asymmetry are mainly observed during minimum and maximum phases respectively of solar cycles. A change of phase is found to be existing between the asymmetries at solar maxima and the whole cycle, after solar cycle 15 and 18. Also, for cycles 17-19, the behaviour of the asymmetry is observed to be peculiar and different from that of the other cycles. Periodic behaviour of north-south asymmetry mainly occurs in 8.8 years and noticed very high during the cycles 18-22.

An improved understanding of the solar corona is crucial for making progress on long-standing problems like coronal heating and the origin of the solar wind. Metrewave radio emissions arise in the coronal regions and form a unique diagnostic probe of this, otherwise hard to study region. The background radio emission at these wavelengths comes from the slowly varying thermal free-free emission and on it are superposed a variety of nonthermal emissions arising from a range of plasma emission processes. The latter are coherent in nature and hence lead to a much larger observational contrast, as compared to that in EUV or X-ray, for emissions involving similar energetics. One of the prevalent hypotheses for explaining coronal heating is based on the presence of an energetically weak population of ‘nanoflares’ (Parker 1988). A necessary requirement for nanoflares based coronal heating to be effective is that their occurrence rate slopes must be <-2 (Hudson 1991). There is hence a lot of interest in studies of weak nonthermal emissions. Existing studies in EUV and X-ray bands have detected ‘microflares’ with slopes >-2 (e.g. Hannah et al. 2011). Some of the weak meterwave emissions detected are, however, believed to correspond to energies in the ‘picoflare’ range (Ramesh et al. 2013). It is hence, very interesting to study weak nonthermal emissions at metric wavelengths.

The analysis of the Ca-K line spectra as a function of latitude and integrated over the visible disk obtained during the period of 1989–2011 at the Kodaikanal Solar Tower Telescope shows that the FWHM of the K1 distribution at different latitudes varies by negligible amount at about 60° latitude whereas it varies significantly at other latitudes. Findings, especially the fewer variations in mid-latitude belts as compared to polar regions and complex variation in the shift in the activity around 60° latitude belt, will have important implications on the modeling of solar dynamos. Further, we have generated a uniform set of digitized Ca-K line images by selecting images considering the intensity distribution of the images corrected for the instrumental vignetting for the data obtained at Kodaikanal during the 20th century. Then, we have determined the percentage of plage and network areas by using the intensity and area threshold values.

The daily time series Flare Index (FI) data of Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere and Total Disk for Solar Cycle 21- 23 and 24 up to Dec. 2014 has been pre-processed using a 2nd order exponential smoothing algorithm to remove orthogonal noise. The smoothed data in each case is processed for scaling analysis using Rescaled-Range Analysis as well as Finite Variance Scaling Method in order to search for the Hurst exponent. As the value of H obtained from our analysis lies in between 0 and 1, so it can be said that the signal may behave like Fractional Brownian Motion. Also, it is observed that H is less than 0.5 which indicates the data is anti-persistent in nature and it has a strong negative correlation within the signal. The value of H also indicates the oscillating features of the signal which might have some fundamental periodicities in the Suns atmosphere.

In this paper we will present our investigations on the characteristics of geomagnetic storms deduced from direct and proxy observations for the years 1601–2016 AD. We show that we could infer epoch of reversal of solar polar magnetic fields from geomagnetic data. Such an inference is done back to the 18th century using geomagnetic and Aurora observations. We could also infer secular changes in the intensity of geomagnetic storms for the past 415 years.

We could identify three categories of solar proton events (SPE) with distinct solar origin from an analysis of direct and indirect observations during the years 1561-2016 CE spanning 42 sunspot cycles. They are (i) 10 MeV SPE whose number of occurrences closely follow the sunspot cycles (ii) 30 MeV SPE which show secular changes with peaks near Gleissberg solar cycle minima and inferred to be associated with distinct enhancements in the efficiency of the solar dynamo and (iii) those associated with Impulsive and irregular solar activity changes such as the Carrington event of September 1859. The relevance of above results for stars exhibiting cyclic and irregular activity changes will be also discussed.

We have studied, the relationship between monthly variations of average counting rates of cosmic ray intensity (CRI) at Moscow super neutron monitoring station with mid cut-off rigidities (~2.42 GV), and the solar radio flux at 10.7cm (F10.7) and sunspot number (SSN) during the solar cycles 22 − 24. The F10.7cm (2800 MHz) and SSN is an excellent indicator of solar activity for the study period. We have investigated the patterns of long-term and mid-term periodicities of SSN and F10.7, using Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) technique. We have observed the time-lag between ascending phase of CRI with F10.7cm and SSN during solar cycles 22 − 24.

Sunspots are active regions on the surface of the Sun having strong magnetic fields. Activity level of the Sun shows long-time scale phenomena known as grand episodes-Grand maxima and Grand minima. Present study examines grand episodes shown by sunspot numbers (1090-2017), using methods of wavelet transform and sinusoidal regression. Time interval analysed includes two grand maxima and four grand minima. Interval in between grand episodes are regular oscillations. Phase changes found from periodicity analysis clearly show the presence of upcoming grand episodes. The forthcoming grand episodes are suggested to be two grand minima which are likely to occur between the years 2100-2160 and 2220-2300.

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) have become one of the key indicators of solar activity, especially in terms of the consequences of the transient events in the heliosphere. Although CMEs are closely related to the sunspot number (SSN), they are also related to other closed magnetic regions on the Sun such as quiescent filament regions. This makes CMEs a better indicator of solar activity. While sunspots mainly represent the toroidal component of solar magnetism, quiescent filaments (and hence CMEs associated with them) connect the toroidal and poloidal components via the rush-to-the-pole (RTTP) phenomenon. Taking the end of RTTP in each hemisphere as an indicator of solar polarity reversal, it is shown that the north-south reversal asymmetry has a quasi-periodicity of 3-5 solar cycles. Focusing on the geospace consequences of CMEs, it is shown that the maximum CME speeds averaged over Carrington rotation period show good correlation with geomagnetic activity indices such as Dst and aa.

It has been established that Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) may have significant impact on terrestrial magnetic field and lead to space weather events. In the present study, we selected several CMEs which are associated with filament eruptions on the Sun. We attempt to identify the presence of filament material within ICME at 1AU. We discuss how different ICMEs associated with filaments lead to moderate or major geomagnetic activity on their arrival at the Earth. Our study also highlights the difficulties in identifying the filament material at 1AU within isolated and in interacting CMEs.

The kinematic modeling of the solar convection zone remains the workhorse of the solar dynamo to understand the solar cycle. During the past several years, the major progress in understanding the solar cycle using kinematic models is as follows. (1). The Babcock-Leighton (BL) mechanism was confirmed to be at the essence of the solar cycle. (2). The scatter of sunspot tilt angles is identified as a major cause of solar cycle irregularities. (3). The important roles of the magnetic pumping in the dynamo process are recognized. (4). Some 3D kinematic BL type dynamo models have been developed. As a key part of the solar dynamo loop, the surface observable part of the BL mechanism makes the physics-based solar cycle prediction feasible. Including the effects of the tilt scatter on the polar field generation, the possible strength of the subsequent cycle can be predicted when a cycle starts for a few years.

Solar torsional oscillations are migrating bands of slower and faster than average rotation, which are thought to be related to the Sun’s magnetic cycle. We perform the first long-term study (16 years) of hemispherical asymmetry in solar torsional oscillation velocity using helioseismic data. We explore the spatial and temporal variation of North-South asymmetry using zonal flow velocities obtained from ring diagram analysis of the Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG) Doppler images. We find a strong correlation between the asymmetries of near-surface torsional oscillation with magnetic flux and sunspot number, with the velocity asymmetry preceding in both the cases. We speculate that the asymmetry in torsional oscillation velocity may help in predicting the hemispherical asymmetry in the sunspot cycle.

Ultraviolet (UV) Solar spectral Irradiance (SSI) has been measured from orbit on a regular basis since the beginning of the space age. These observations span four Solar Cycles, and they are crucial for our understanding of the Sun-Earth connection and space weather. SSI at these wavelengths are the main drivers for the upper atmosphere including the production and destruction of ozone in the stratosphere. The instruments that measure UV SSI not only require good preflight calibration, but also need a robust method to maintain that calibration on orbit. We will give an overview of the catalog of current and former UV SSI measurements along with the calibration philosophy of each instrument and an estimation of the uncertainties in the published irradiances.

We explore the cause of the solar cycle variabilities using a novel 3D Babcock–Leighton dynamo model. In this model, based on the toroidal flux at the base of the convection zone, bipolar magnetic regions (BMRs) are produced with statistical properties obtained from observed distributions. We find that a little quenching in BMR tilt is sufficient to stabilize the dynamo growth. The randomness and nonlinearity in the BMR emergences make the poloidal field unequal and cause some variability in the solar cycle. However, when observed scatter of BMR tilts around Joy’s law with a standard deviation of 15°, is considered, our model produces a variation in the solar cycle, including north-south asymmetry comparable to the observations. The morphology of magnetic fields closely resembles observations, in particular the surface radial field possesses a more mixed polarity field. Observed scatter also produces grand minima. In 11,650 years of simulation, 17 grand minima are detected and 11% of its time the model remained in these grand minima. When we double the tilt scatter, the model produces correct statistics of grand minima. Importantly, the dynamo continues even during grand minima with only a few BMRs, without requiring any additional alpha effect. The reason for this is the downward magnetic pumping which suppresses the diffusion of the magnetic flux across the surface. The magnetic pumping also helps to achieve 11-year magnetic cycle using the observed BMR flux distribution, even at the high diffusivity.