One-Up On L1: Can X-rays Provide Longer Advanced Warning of Solar Wind Flux Enhancements Than Upstream Monitors?

Abstract

Observations of strong solar wind proton flux correlations with ROSAT X-ray rates along with high spectral resolution Chandra observations of X-rays from the dark Moon show that soft X-ray emission mirrors the behavior of the solar wind. In this paper, based on an analysis of an X-ray event observed by XMM-Newton resulting from charge exchange of high charge state solar wind ions and contemporaneous neutral solar wind data, we argue that X-ray observations may be able to provide reliable advance warning, perhaps by as much as half a day, of dramatic increases in solar wind flux at Earth. Like neutral atom imaging, this provides the capability to monitor the solar wind remotely rather than in-situ.

in press in Adv. Space Research, 7 pages, 6 eps figures, resolution reduced for Astro-ph submission, see http://lena.gsfc.nasa.gov for full version