HR: 15:05h
AN: SM33E-06 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Understanding Solar Flare Statistics
AU: * Wheatland, M S
EM: m.wheatland@physics.usyd.edu.au
AF: University of Sydney, School of Physics, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006 Australia
AB: A review is presented of work aimed at understanding solar flare statistics, with emphasis on the well known flare power-law size distribution. Although avalanche models are perhaps the favoured model to describe flare statistics, their physical basis is unclear, and they are divorced from developing ideas in large-scale reconnection theory. An alternative model, aimed at reconciling large-scale reconnection models with solar flare statistics, is revisited. The solar flare waiting-time distribution has also attracted recent attention. Observed waiting-time distributions are described, together with what they might tell us about the flare phenomenon. Finally, a practical application of flare statistics to flare prediction is described in detail, including the results of a year of automated (web-based) predictions from the method.
DE: 7500 SOLAR PHYSICS, ASTROPHYSICS, AND ASTRONOMY
DE: 7509 Corona
DE: 7519 Flares
DE: 7524 Magnetic fields
DE: 7536 Solar activity cycle (2162)
SC: SPA-Magnetospheric Physics [SM]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005