Context. During a solar flare, a large percentage of the magnetic energy released goes into the kinetic energy of non-thermal particles, with X-ray observations providing a direct connection to keV flare-accelerated electrons. However, the electron angular distribution, a prime diagnostic tool of the acceleration mechanism and transport, is poorly known. Aims. During the next solar maximum, two...

Predicting the occurrence of solar flares is a challenge of great importance for many space weather scientists and users. We introduce a data mining approach, called Behavior Pattern Learning (BPL), for automatically discovering correlations between solar flares and active region data, in order to predict the former. The goal of BPL is to predict the interval of time to the next solar flare and...

The solar seismic waves excited by solar flares (" sunquakes ") are observed as circular expanding waves on the Sun's surface. The first sunquake was observed for a flare of July 9, 1996, from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) space mission. However, when the new solar cycle started in 1997, the observations of solar flares from SOHO did not show the seismic waves, similar to the 19...

An automated neural network-based system for predicting solar flares from their associated sunspots and simulated solar cycle is introduced. A sunspot is the cooler region of the Sun's photosphere which, thus, appears dark on the Sun's disc, and a solar flare is sudden, short lived, burst of energy on the Sun's surface, lasting from minutes to hours. The system explores the publicly available s...

The ionospheric response to two X5 solar flares that occurred in different seasons was investigated using the global ionosphere-thermosphere model. Two questions were investigated: (a) how do different solar flares with similar X-ray peak intensities disturb the ionosphere during the same background and driving conditions? and (b) how do the geomagnetic field and season affect the ionospheric r...

This paper describes the methods used to obtain the thermal evolution and radiative output during solar flares as observed by the Extreme ultraviolet Variability Experiment (EVE) onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Presented and discussed in detail are how EVE measurements, due to its temporal cadence, spectral resolution and spectral range, can be used to determine how the thermal pl...

We review the observational, theoretical, and numerical efforts to interpret the statistical behavior of solar flares and sub-flares, and their role to coronal heating. The observed X-ray flares cannot heat the corona. The role of smaller-scale events is still inconclusive, although very recent observational evidence may shed light to the controversy. Statistical and classical modeling reproduc...

The observations on the ionospheric electron and ion temperatures (Te and Ti) measured by the RPA payload aboard the SROSS-C2 satellite have been used to study the effect of solar flares on ionospheric heating. The data on solar flare has been obtained from the National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) Boulder, Colorado (USA). It has been found that the electron and ion temperatures have a consis...

AbstracL Solar flares, coronal mass ejections (CMEs), solar energetic particles (SEPs), and fast solar wind rqrresent the energetic phenomera on the Sun. Flares and CMEs originate from closed magnetic field shuctures on the Sun typically found in active regions and quiescent filamant regions. On the other hand, fast solar wind originates from open field regions on the Sun, identified as coronal...