Flares in Active Region NOAA 7260 - Role of Emerging Flux

Active region NOAA 7260 exhibited remarkable flare activity as an emerging flux region appeared in the following part and evolved into the delta configuration. While it is difficult to associate an emerging bipole with a flare both temporally and spatially, there is an overall correlation of the total darkness integrated over of the sunspot area, as measured in the Yohkoh/SXT white-light images, with the soft X-ray flux and flare occurrence. It appears that the flares in the emerging flux region occurred preferentially at locations close to the spot of preceding polarity that emerged in the earliest evolution of the region.