Coronal Mass Ejections, Solar Cycles and Magnetic Poles Reversal

Abstract

The magnitude of the measured geomagnetic index increases when the Coronal Mass Ejections occur on the Sun's surface. The abrupt increase in the geomagnetic index has seriously impacted the accuracy in the forecast of the activity of the next solar cycle. A method is proposed to filter the effect from the Coronal Mass Ejections. The correlation between the geomagnetic index and the activity of the subsequent solar cycle is found to have drastically improved with the proposed scheme. A strong correlation between the maximum amplitude R N of a solar cycle N and its pre-cycle coronal mass ejections adjusted monthly geomagnetic activity index has been qualitatively determined, as illustrated by an impressive correlation coefficient of 0.91+0.09-0.12, with its statistical significance estimated at 4.3 σ. The corrected data have significantly improved the correlation between the observed variables from their original un-corrected case of 0.63 ± 0.23. Our result indicates that the upcoming solar cycle, estimated at R 25 = 147 ± 30, would be stronger than the current waning solar cycle 24. In a related calculation, the magnetic poles reversals occurring in the solar cycles 21 and 22 are reproduced numerically from Maxwell's electromagnetic equations.