AR3615

[MeteoLatvia]

Yet another impulsive M-flare (M1.3) now. Does these rapid flares which happen one after another indicate that potentially much stronger flare is coming or there is no proven correlation bewteen it?

[Misaka]

14 minutes ago, MeteoLatvia said:

Yet another impulsive M-flare (M1.3) now.

And another M-Flare (M1.19)

 

 

[MeteoLatvia]

3 minutes ago, Misaka said:

And another M-Flare (M1.19)

 

 

Yes... ...again... 3 M flares in past 2 hours. I wonder - if it is brewing for something?

[Philalethes]

58 minutes ago, MinYoongi said:

i agree  

I have a question regarding yesterdays flare, is this region "magnetic caging" too? Because there was no cme. i had a conversation with @Landon Moeller about it. 

Good question, although my intuition would say that it's less likely, since there's no single large bundle of coronal loops here. You can see the unsigned flux of the region here (second column from the right). The paper discussed with regards to that previous large region stated:

Quote

If the AR has a moderate magnetic flux (larger than 3.0 x 10^22 Mx and smaller than 1.0 x 10^23 Mx), the likelihood of eruptive and confined events appears to be almost equal.

That previous region had an unsigned flux that bordered on the upper end of that range, with a flux of as much as 8-9e+22 Mx during the later parts of its transit, which was where caging was found to be very strong. As you can read from the above link, this region has been hovering around 4-5e+22 Mx, which is closer to the lower end of that moderate range, and so caging will likely have less of an effect, although it does probably have some effect by virtue of being within that range.

[MeteoLatvia]

50 minutes ago, MeteoLatvia said:

Yet another impulsive M-flare (M1.3) now. Does these rapid flares which happen one after another indicate that potentially much stronger flare is coming or there is no proven correlation bewteen it?

And another one... Now 3 M-class flares in 1 hour. This region is boiling, but we need something bigger and longer lasting.

[Misaka]

4 minutes ago, MeteoLatvia said:

And another one... Now 3 M-class flares in 1 hour. This region is boiling, but we need something bigger and longer lasting.

And now we're at 4

This seems big!

Edited March 23 by Misaka

[MeteoLatvia]

3 minutes ago, Misaka said:

And now we're at 4

This seems big!

Yep, the region heard me. M5.2, but looks like also impulsive... 😕

[libmar96]

Gone to M5.2, went a little lower but it rises again. Will be a good one!

[MinYoongi]

its not going down fast

[MeteoLatvia]

2 minutes ago, libmar96 said:

Gone to M5.2, went a little lower but it rises again. Will be a good one!

Oh, really. It seemed that it went down fast, but it has risen again.

[Sotiris Konstantis]

the M5.2 is not impulsive at first sight. It's rising again (it is at M5.3 now)

Edited March 23 by Sotiris Konstantis

[SamDieGurke]

seems to be going down now

[hamateur 1953]

Haha. I just looked at solar soft for the last day!!  3615 seems jealous of 3614 dealing the X class.  It will get there soon,  it is cranking up its spots!! 🤣  This is more like it😆

Edited March 23 by hamateur 1953

[chronical]

Well a triple flare, would you look at that

[WhereingtonEvent]

Does each flare reduce potential energy for the next, similar to how earthquakes reduce potential energy stored in the earth’s mantle? 

[Sotiris Konstantis]

This spot ticks every single box. It will be a real shame if we lost this chance now that it's pointing directly.

8 minutes ago, WhereingtonEvent said:

Does each flare reduce potential energy for the next, similar to how earthquakes reduce potential energy stored in the earth’s mantle? 

For quakes, that's not true as far as I know. The more quakes back-to-back the worse the chances get for a big one. A 5.0 earthquake is 600 times less than a 7 (in terms of energy released) so it is not easy to release energy with smaller events. I think the same holds for flares.

 

We now have much more chances of seeing an X flare than we would have had if we had no C and M flares at all. This would mean the sunspot is a bummer. It actually happens sometimes that we have complexity and we don't see a flare, or we see a big one but impulsive. Like I said, this spot in my opinion ticks every box right now.

Edited March 23 by Sotiris Konstantis

[Christopher Shriver]

22 minutes ago, WhereingtonEvent said:

Does each flare reduce potential energy for the next, similar to how earthquakes reduce potential energy stored in the earth’s mantle? 

No, owing to entirely unique physics which produce them vs. plate tectonics and geology. These are also not surface and sub-surface events, at least explicitly speaking, but rather are taking place far above the surface of the Sun. In many ways, the physics of seismicity falls primarily under general relativity, and the physics of flares and the wavelengths of light/interactions of synchrotronic radiation produced(alongside the obvious X-ray bits) is primarily informed by special relativity. Correct me if I'm mistaken here

Also, the aforementioned removal of energy through earthquakes relies on a number of hypothetical assumptions and a limited amount of confirmed observational data. I may be misinterpreting, and you may mean that subsequent flares have less "fuel to burn" so to speak? This is unlikely, considering the scale of the body generating them.

These flares are fortunately not burning up huge resources and even in a traditionally chaotic sampling of combustible solids in our atmosphere, stuff can burn and blow up at varying, inconsistent rates based on distribution, weathering, and temperature.

A calculus equation or several would probably be useful to illustrate some of these concepts better than words, but there ya go

Edited March 23 by Christopher Shriver

[Caniss]

Another sun flare , now M1.5

[MinYoongi]

Thats what i asked myself a lot of times too, but i did not really receive an answer.

I always thought, due to flaring especially consecutive flares, regions "stabilize" or "burn out their energy". 

[SamDieGurke]

 Aaaand back up to M we go. This region is insane. Now just give us a good CME like 3614 did!

[libmar96]

5th rise above M-class level in the last 135 minutes gives AR 3615 a Lewandowski Hat-Trick Award

Even SWL didn't alert for 5th time thinking it's a normal behavior

[WhereingtonEvent]

5 minutes ago, MinYoongi said:

Thats what i asked myself a lot of times too, but i did not really receive an answer.

I always thought, due to flaring especially consecutive flares, regions "stabilize" or "burn out their energy". 

That’s what I assumed was happening. However I believe we are to understand that the sun flares due to its “complexity” and that flares do not reduce complexity. Now that I have learned something new today, I can just go play some more chess. 

[MinYoongi]

Just now, WhereingtonEvent said:

 However I believe we are to understand that the sun flares due to its “complexity” and that flares do not reduce complexity. 

Hm, thank you for the input! what are the others opinions?

[Sotiris Konstantis]

6 minutes ago, libmar96 said:

5th rise above M-class level in the last 135 minutes gives AR 3615 a Lewandowski Hat-Trick Award

Even SWL didn't alert for 5th time thinking it's a normal behavior

I think there's another one I've lost count really.

[Philalethes]

23 minutes ago, Christopher Shriver said:

Also, the aforementioned removal of energy through earthquakes relies on a number of hypothetical assumptions and a limited amount of confirmed observational data. I may be misinterpreting, and you may mean that subsequent flares have less "fuel to burn" so to speak? This is unlikely, considering the scale of the body generating them.

These flares are fortunately not burning up huge resources and even in a traditionally chaotic sampling of combustible solids in our atmosphere, stuff can burn and blow up at varying, inconsistent rates based on distribution, weathering, and temperature.

I think that's a great point to consider. While we know that the energy release happens in similar ways, i.e. release of potential energy (magnetic in the case of flares and gravitational in the case of earthquakes), the potential energy for earthquakes tends to build up a lot more slowly, while the potential energy for flares can build up way faster due to the much more extreme dynamics there.

So while in some cases an active region might die out due to no longer complexifying and expending all of its remaining potential energy in flares, another active region might be continuously fed more complexity from the surrounding dynamics, and thus just flare more and more; although I haven't personally witnessed it myself, this does indeed seem to be the case for the most extreme regions of the cycles, which pump out multiple eruptive X-flares in quick succession.

I suppose a better question would perhaps be if periods of extreme Solar activity in some way expends energy from the larger reservoir that causes the Solar cycles in the first place. I know Scott has been posting recently about how he suspects such extreme periods can cause interference between separate Hale cycle bands, which then subsequently dampens and prolongs the subsequent cycle(s) until the Solar dynamo gets everything back on track.