• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.295-302
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• 2004

Magnetic storms are almost always accompanied with substorms or substorm-like disturbances. Understanding the nature of the storm-time substorm is important for the currently critical issue of the storm-substorm relation. In this work we have done a statistical analysis in a straightforward way to see whether the storm-time substorms are preferably spontaneous or triggered. On the basis of 301 storm-time substorms selected for this work, we have found that the occurrence of about $28\%$ of them was spontaneous while only $6.5\%$ were associated with a clear trigger(s). The rest of the events were mostly associated with complex variations of IMF. The significant percentage for the spontaneous substorms implies that the possibility of finding a storm without a substorm is greatly reduced due to the spontaneous occurrence of the substorm even when the solar wind and IMF condition remains completely steady during the storm time.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.50 no.2
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• pp.29-39
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• 2017

We investigate two abnormal CME-Storm pairs that occurred on 2014 September 10 - 12 and 2015 March 15 - 17, respectively. The first one was a moderate geomagnetic storm ($Dst_{min}{\sim}-75nT$) driven by the X1.6 high speed flare-associated CME ($1267km\;s^{-1}$) in AR 12158 (N14E02) near solar disk center. The other was a very intense geomagnetic storm ($Dst_{min}{\sim}-223nT$) caused by a CME with moderate speed ($719km\;s^{-1}$) and associated with a filament eruption accompanied by a weak flare (C9.1) in AR 12297 (S17W38). Both CMEs have large direction parameters facing the Earth and southward magnetic field orientation in their solar source region. In this study, we inspect the structure of Interplanetary Flux Ropes (IFRs) at the Earth estimated by using the torus fitting technique assuming self-similar expansion. As results, we find that the moderate storm on 2014 September 12 was caused by small-scale southward magnetic fields in the sheath region ahead of the IFR. The Earth traversed the portion of the IFR where only the northward fields are observed. Meanwhile, in case of the 2015 March 17 storm, our IFR analysis revealed that the Earth passed the very portion where only the southward magnetic fields are observed throughout the passage. The resultant southward magnetic field with long-duration is the main cause of the intense storm. We suggest that 3D magnetic field geometry of an IFR at the IFR-Earth encounter is important and the strength of a geomagnetic storm is strongly affected by the relative location of the Earth with respect to the IFR structure.

• Bulletin of the Korean Space Science Society
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• 2011.04a
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• pp.27.2-27.2
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• 2011

The Total Electron Content (TEC) measured from Global Positioning System (GPS) can be continuously or peculiarly increased (positive ionospheric storm) or decreased (negative ionospheric storm) with solar and geomagnetic activities as well as the chemical and dynamic processes with thermosphere in the mid-latitudes. The ionospheric storm is not easy to predict owing to its difficult mechanism, and the real-time GPS TEC monitoring may be useful to follow ionospheric response to solar and geomagnetic storms. Korea Astronomy & Space Science Institute has continuously monitor GPS TEC over Korea Peninsula in near real-time of 10 minutes to watch activities. In this presentation, we will report the variation of GPS TEC over Daejeon and JeJu in Korea during the period of solar flare eruption and geomagnetic storm events in 2011. These events in 2011 will be compared with the event in October 2003 and November 2004.

• Bulletin of the Korean Space Science Society
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.33.2-33.2
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• 2008

Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) is developing an empirical model for Korean Space Weather Prediction Center (KSWPC). This model predicts the geomagnetic storm strength (Dst minimum) by using only CME parameters, such as the source location (L), speed (V), earthward direction (D), and magnetic field orientation of an overlaying potential field at CME source region. To derive an empirical formula, we considered that (1) the direction parameter has best correlation with the storm strength (2) west $15^{\circ}$ offset from the central meridian gives best correlation between the source location and the storm strength (3) consideration of two groups of CMEs according to their magnetic field orientation (southward or northward) provide better forecast. In this talk, we introduce current status of the empirical storm prediction model development.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.133-147
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• 2019

Challenging Minisatellite Payload (CHAMP) satellite magnetic data are used to investigate the latitudinal variation of the storm-time meso-scale field-aligned currents by defining a new metric called the FAC range. Three major geomagnetic storm events are considered. Alongside SymH, the possible contributions from solar wind dynamic pressure and interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) $B_Z$ are also investigated. The results show that the new metric predicts the latitudinal variation of FACs better than previous studies. As expected, the equatorward expansion and poleward retreat are observed during the storm main phase and recovery phase respectively. The equatorward shift is prominent on the northern duskside, at ${\sim}58^{\circ}$ coinciding with the minimum SymH and dayside at ${\sim}59^{\circ}$ compared to dawnside and nightside respectively. The latitudinal shift of FAC range is better correlated to IMF $B_Z$ in northern hemisphere dusk-dawn magnetic local time (MLT) sectors than in southern hemisphere. The FAC range latitudinal shifts responds better to dynamic pressure in the duskside northern hemisphere and dawnside southern hemisphere than in southern hemisphere dusk sector and northern hemisphere dawn sector respectively. FAC range exhibits a good correlation with dynamic pressure in the dayside (nightside) southern (northern) hemispheres depicting possible electrodynamic similarity at day-night MLT sectors in the opposite hemispheres.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.33-33
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• 2013

We are developing empirical space weather (solar flare, solar proton event, and geomagnetic storm) forecast models based on solar data. In this talk we will review our main results and recent progress. First, we have examined solar flare (R) occurrence probability depending on sunspot McIntosh classification, its area, and its area change. We find that sunspot area and its increase (a proxy of flux emergence) greatly enhance solar flare occurrence rates for several sunspot classes. Second, a solar proton event (S) forecast model depending on flare parameters (flare strength, duration, and longitude) as well as CME parameters (speed and angular width) has been developed. We find that solar proton event probability strongly depends on these parameters and CME speed is well correlated with solar proton flux for disk events. Third, we have developed an empirical storm (G) forecast model to predict probability and strength of a storm using halo CME - Dst storm data. For this we use storm probability maps depending on CME parameters such as speed, location, and earthward direction. We are also looking for geoeffective CME parameters such as cone model parameters and magnetic field orientation. We find that all superstorms (less than -200 nT) occurred in the western hemisphere with southward field orientations. We have a plan to set up a storm forecast method with a three-stage approach, which will make a prediction within four hours after the solar coronagraph data become available. We expect that this study will enable us to forecast the onset and strength of a geomagnetic storm a few days in advance using only CME parameters and the WSA-ENLIL model. Finally, we discuss several ongoing works for space weather applications.

• Bulletin of the Korean Space Science Society
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.36-36
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• 2003

While it is presumed that substorm injection electrons of a few hundred keV are the seeds for relativistic electrons frequently observed during the recovery phase of storms, correlation between the two events has not been well explored with the observed satellite data. We would like to address this problem in the present paper using the data from the geosynchronous GOES and LANL satellites as well as from the polar orbiting NOAA satellites. Our statistical study shows the two channels of LANL SOPA instrument, 105 150 keV and 150 225 keV, best correlates with the increase of the flux levels of GOES relativistic electrons. Especially, the relativistic electron events are not observed when the flux levels of these two channels are maintained low in the substorm injections, regardless of the level of the ULF activities. The conclusion does not change whether the substorm injections occur . during the storm recovery phase or during the non-storm time. As the ULF waves are observed quite frequently over the entire range of L=4 to L=7, the reason why REEs are seen mostly during the storm time seems to be related to the fact that storm-time substorms produce more seed electrons than the substorms that occur during the non-storm time.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.90.1-90.1
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• 2011

We are developing empirical space weather (geomagnetic storms, solar proton events, and solar flares) forecast models based on solar information. These models have been set up with the concept of probabilistic forecast using historical events. Major findings can be summarized as follows. First, we present a concept of storm probability map depending on CME parameters (speed and location). Second, we suggested a new geoeffective CME parameter, earthward direction parameter, directly observable from coronagraph observations, and demonstrated its importance in terms of the forecast of geomagnetic storms. Third, the importance of solar magnetic field orientation for storm occurrence was examined. Fourth, the relationship among coronal hole-CIR-storm relationship has been investigated, Fifth, the CIR forecast based on coronal hole information is possible but the storm forecast is challenging. Sixth, a new solar proton event (flux, strength, and rise time) forecast method depending on flare parameters (flare strength, duration, and longitude) as well as CME parameter (speed, angular width, and longitude) has been suggested. Seventh, we are examining the rates and probability of solar flares depending on sunspot McIntosh classification and its area change (as a proxy of flux change). Our results show that flux emergence greatly enhances the flare probability, about two times for flare productive sunspot regions.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.94.2-94.2
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• 2013

We studied the precipitation of magnetospheric energetic electrons into the Earth's atmosphere during magnetic storm times using precipitating electron flux data from the MEPED on board the NOAA Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites (POES) low.altitude satellite, NOAA-16. We identified a total of 84 storm events between 2001 and 2012 using SYM-H index. We have done a superposition of precipitating electron fluxes for each of three energy ranges (i.e., e1: > 30 keV, e2: > 100 keV, e3: > 300 keV) for the identified storm times. The results show that the fluxes start to increase before the main phase of storm for all energy ranges and reach a maximum level just before the time of SYM-H minimum value. The precipitation timescales are energy-dependent, being shorter for lower energy, ~4.67 hours for e1, ~7.93 hours for e2 and ~26.5 hours for e3. The precipitating fluxes decline during the recovery phase of the storms. We examined the L shell dependence of the precipitating electron flux during the main phase. We found that statistically the precipitation fluxes are dominantly seen at L of ~ 3-4 or higher. This L value roughly corresponds to the plasmapause location during the main phase. Thus the results imply that the electron precipitation mainly occurs outside of the plasmapause. In addition, we classified the storm events by their strength and examined the dependence of precipitation on storm intensity. We found that the electron precipitation occurs on a faster time scale and penetrate into inner L shell region for a stronger storm.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.27-32
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• 2001

A statistical study has been performed of the magnetic storm recovery phase using the Dst index for 102 storm events in the interval January 1996 to December 1998. In 43 cases (or 42%) out of our 102 events, the recovery phase exhibits fast recovery (kaking about 8 hours or less) at its initial stage or for the entire recovery period. Since this fast recovery can be explained by the fast charge exchange less of $O^{+}$ ions which mostly com from the ionosphere, and since a fraction of $H^{+}$ ions is of ionospheric origin as well, our statistical result supports the view that the source of ring current ions in many magnetic storms can be terrestrial.