A Study of Intense Geomagnetic Storms and their Associated Solar and Interplanetary Causes

Abstract

Shocks driven by energetic coronal mass ejections and other interplanetary transients are mainly responsible for large disturbances in geomagnetic field of Earth and play a key role in producing a geomagnetic storm or substorm. A geomagnetic storm is a global disturbance in Earth's magnetic field usually occurred due to abnormal conditions in the IMF and solar wind plasma emissions caused by various solar phenomenon. Identifying intense geomagnetic storms with Dst decrease more than/or equal to 300 nT occurred during 1981-2001, a correlative study has been performed to analyze the associated solar and interplanetary causes of these 09 events using solar wind plasma, IMF and solar geophysical data. It is observed statistically that 55% storms have occurred during solar maximum and 45% occurred during minimum phase of solar cycles. Further, study reveals that 77% intense storms are associated with CMEs, which confirms earlier findings.To search for other articles by the author(s) go to: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html