Ground-Based Coronagraph Observations as an early warning system for Solar Energetic Particle Events

St.Cyr et al. (2017) proposed using a ground-based coronagraph as an early warning system for solar energetic particle (SEP) events driven by coronal mass ejection (CME)-generated shocks. That work investigated numerous observations related to a single SEP event produced by a CME on January 1, 2016 and recorded at the Mauna Loa Solar Observatory (MLSO) K-Coronagraph (K-Cor) in Hawaii. We report on current work that extends the study to all major SEP events occurring from September 2013 to the present that overlap with coronagraph observations from K-Cor to further assess the viability of such an early warning system. The visibility, properties and timing of the CMEs in the K-Cor low corona field-of-view are compared with their properties seen in the outer corona by the LASCO coronagraph, and with properties of the SEP events and related activity such as solar flares. An early warning system for SEP-events also requires automated detection of CMEs low in the corona. We make use of the CME detection algorithm created by Thompson et al. (2017) that was adapted from the Solar Eruptive Event Detection System (SEEDS) package. Thompson has since upgraded the algorithm to detect wider CMEs. To test the upgrade, we examine LASCO halo events that occurred during times when MLSO K-Cor data are available using the Thompson algorithm and manual (human) examination. We report on the properties of the halo events as seen in K-Cor and in LASCO data by the detection software and by manual detection.