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V. I. Abramenko (Crimean Astrophysical Obs., Ukraine), V. B. Yurchyshyn, H. Wang, T. J. Spirock, P. R. Goode (Big Bear Solar Obs.)
In the framework of a refined Kolmogorov's hypotheses, the scaling behavior of the BZ--component of the photospheric magnetic field is analyzed and compared with flaring activity in solar active regions. We used SOHO/MDI, Huairou (China) and Big Bear measurements of the Bz-component in the photosphere for nine active regions. We show that there is no universal behavior in the scaling of the Bz-structure functions for different active regions.
Scaling for a given active region is caused by intermittency in the field, \varepsilon(B)(\vec x), of magnetic energy dissipation. When intermittency is weak, the Bz-field behaves as a passive scalar in the turbulent flow and the energy dissipation is largely determined by the dissipation of kinetic energy in active regions with low flare productivity. However, when the field \varepsilon(B)(\vec x) is highly intermittent, the structure functions behave as transverse structure functions of a fully developed turbulent vector field and the scaling of the energy dissipation is mostly determined by the dissipation of the magnetic energy (active regions with strong flaring productivity).
We found that the spectrum of dissipation of the Bz component is strongly related to the level of flare productivity of a solar active region. When the flare productivity is high, the corresponding spectrum is less steep. We also found that during the evolution of an NOAA AR 9393 the Bz dissipation spectrum becomes less steep as the active region's flare activity increases. We suggest that the relation between scaling exponents and flare productivity of an active region enables us to monitor and forecast flare activity using only measurements of the Bz component of the photospheric magnetic field.
This work was supported in part by the Ukrainian Ministry of Science and Education, NSF-ATM (0076602 and 0086999) and NASA (9682 and 9738) grants. SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: avi@crao.crimea.ua
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 34
© 2002. The American Astronomical Soceity.