An Automated System for Empirical Forecasting of Solar Flares and CMEs

Solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are two major solar eruptive phenomena which can cause enormous economic and commercial losses: (1) flares are sudden, rapid, and intense brightenings from radio waves to Gamma-rays in the chromosphere and corona, and (2) CMEs are large-scale transient eruptions of magnetized plasma from the solar corona that propagate outward into interplanetary space. Most flares and CMEs occur in magnetically complicated solar active regions (ARs). Therefore, it is crucial to investigate magnetic fields in ARs and their temporal variations for understanding a precondition and a trigger mechanism related to flare/CME initiation. In this presentation, we will introduce an automated system for empirical forecasting of flares and CMEs in ARs using full-disk photospheric line-of-sight magnetogram data taken by the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) onboard the SDO.