Solar Magnetism and CMEs

Low, B.C

Abstract

In relating CMEs to their associated solar flares and prominences as hydromagnetic processes, one is naturally led to consider the physical roles of these processes in the evolution of the corona as a plasma atmosphere behaving in response to the cyclical solar dynamo. Physical concerns then shift beyond the interest in the individual events to ask whether each event is just a release of an impressive amount of magnetic energy, or, each event makes an accumulative change to the corona. A coherent physical picture in favor of the latter possibility was proposed recently by the author. Several physical issues that have arisen since that proposal will be discussed to arrive at some interesting implications.

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