Using Two-Ribbon Flare Data Set to Constrain Flare Properties

Flare ribbons are emission structures that are frequently observed during flares in transition-region and chromospheric radiation. These typically straddle a polarity inversion line (PIL) of the radial magnetic field at the photosphere, and move apart as the flare progresses. The ribbon flux - the amount of unsigned photospheric magnetic flux swept out by flare ribbons - is thought to be related to the amount coronal magnetic reconnection, and hence provides a key diagnostic tool for understanding the physical processes at work in flares and CMEs. Previous measurements of the magnetic flux swept out by flare ribbons required time-consuming co-alignment between magnetograph and intensity data from different instruments, explaining why those studies only analyzed, at most, a few events. The launch of the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) and the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA), both aboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), presented a rare opportunity to compile a much larger sample of flare-ribbon events than could readily be assembled before. We created a dataset of 407 events of both flare ribbon positions and fluxes, as a function of time, for all C8.-class and greater flares within 45 degrees of disk center observed by SDO from April 2010 till April 2016. For this purpose, we used vector magnetograms (2D magnetic field maps) from HMI and UV images from AIA. A critical problem with using unprocessed AIA data is the existence of spurious intensities in AIA data associated with strong flare emission, most notably