Studies of Global Solar Magnetic Field Patterns Using a Newly Digitized Archive
Abstract
The McIntosh Archive consists of a set of hand-drawn solar Carrington maps created by Patrick McIntosh from 1964 to 2009. McIntosh used mainly H-alpha, He 10830Å and photospheric magnetic measurements from both ground-based and NASA satellite observations. With these he traced polarity inversion lines (PILs), filaments, sunspots and plage and, later, coronal holes, yielding a unique 45-year record of features associated with the large-scale organization of the solar magnetic field. We discuss our efforts to preserve and digitize this archive. The original hand-drawn maps have been scanned, a method for processing these scans into digital, searchable format has been developed, and a website and an archival repository at NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) has been created. Presently ~ 70% of the final processed archive is complete, from SC 20 through to the start of SC 24, but with long gaps in SCs 20, 21 and 22. Here we present preliminary results using the archived maps from SC 21-23. We show the global evolution of closed magnetic structures (e.g., sunspots, plage, and filaments) relative to open structures (e.g., coronal holes), and examine how both relate to the shifting patterns of large-scale positive and negative polarity regions.
- Publication:
-
2018 Triennial Earth-Sun Summit (TESS)
- Pub Date:
- May 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018tess.conf10308G