coronal holes solar eruption sun monsoon india – Scientists reveal how coronal holes on Sun influence monsoon rains in India
A new study has accurately estimated the physical parameters of thermal and magnetic field structures within solar coronal holes, which have a significant influence on space weather and the Indian summer monsoon rainfall.
These findings are crucial, as space weather affects satellites, and there’s growing evidence linking coronal holes to variations in the Indian Monsoon rainfall.
Coronal holes, dark regions observed in X-ray and extreme ultraviolet images of the Sun, are characterised by open magnetic field lines, making them essential for understanding the interplanetary medium.
Astronomers from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) have now accurately characterised the latitude dependence of temperature and magnetic field strengths within these coronal holes.
First discovered in the 1970s, coronal holes are low-density regions with open magnetic field structures that extend into interplanetary space.
These phenomena are intense sources of fast solar wind, streams of charged particles escaping the sun at high speeds. This high-speed solar wind can interact with Earth’s magnetic field, causing geomagnetic storms and disturbances in the Earth’s ionosphere, which can disrupt radio wave communication.
The study, published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, used eight years of full-disk calibrated images from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) space probe to study coronal holes.
Researchers unambiguously detected these holes and accurately estimated the physical parameters of their thermal and magnetic field structures.
Dr. Manjunath Hegde of IIA, the study’s lead author, highlighted two key findings. First, there is no significant variation in the temperature structure of coronal holes across different latitudes.
Second, the strength of the magnetic field structure within coronal holes varies with latitude, increasing from the solar equator to the poles. These results suggest that coronal holes likely originate from the deep solar interior and may form from the superposition of Alfven wave perturbations, respectively.
Understanding the thermal structure allows scientists to estimate the depths of origin of coronal holes, while radiative flux and energy estimations help quantify the thermal energy input into interplanetary space.
According to Dr K.M. Hiremath from IIA, information regarding the latitudinal variation of temperature indirectly leads to estimations of the magnetic field structure, offering clues to the formation of coronal holes.
