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Timing accuracy for the simple planar propagation of magnetic field structures in the solar wind
Author(s) -
Collier Michael R.,
Slavin J. A.,
Lepping R. P.,
Szabo A.,
Ogilvie K.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/98gl00735
Subject(s) - solar wind , solar maximum , physics , magnetometer , computational physics , interplanetary magnetic field , correlation coefficient , solar minimum , meteorology , magnetic field , atmospheric sciences , coronal mass ejection , solar cycle , mathematics , statistics , quantum mechanics
Results from a correlation analysis of Wind and IMP 8 magnetometer data for a total of 543 two hour periods covering Jan.–Jul. 1995 were analyzed to determine that: (1) the timing accuracy Δτ for advecting solar wind magnetic field structures goes as (d per /d par ) · τ con where d par is the spacecraft separation along the Sun‐Earth line, d per is the transverse separation, and τ con is the predicted convection lag time, (2) “good” correlation time periods (peak correlation coefficient >0.80) are about twice as likely at solar maximum than at solar minimum, (3) geometry affects timing accuracy more than any propagation of features with respect to the solar wind, and (4) there is a “high” probability (greater than predicted by a Gaussian distribution) of “very bad” (|d par Δτ/d per τ con | >3) timing agreement due to the long tail on the probability distribution.