The best of both worlds: Using automatic detection and limited human supervision to create a homogenous magnetic catalog spanning four solar cycles

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method combining automatic detection and limited human supervision to create a comprehensive, homogeneous catalog of bipolar magnetic regions spanning four solar cycles, addressing a longstanding gap in solar magnetic data.

Contribution

The paper presents the BARD code that integrates automatic and manual detection methods to produce a consistent, long-term catalog of BMRs from the 1970s to present, enhancing solar magnetic research.

Findings

The BARD catalog contains over 10,000 tracked BMRs.

Combining automatic and manual detection improves catalog homogeneity.

Future plans include integrating multiple catalogs for multi-scale analysis.

Abstract

Bipolar magnetic regions (BMRs) are the cornerstone of solar variability. They are tracers of the large-scale magnetic processes that give rise to the solar cycle, shapers of the solar corona, building blocks of the large-scale solar magnetic field, and significant contributors to the free-energetic budget that gives rise to flares and coronal mass ejections. Surprisingly, no homogeneous catalog of BMRs exists today, in spite of the existence of systematic measurements of the magnetic field since the early 1970's. The purpose of this work is to address this deficiency by creating a homogenous catalog of BMRs from the 1970's until the present. For this purpose, in this paper we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the automatic and manual detection of BMRs and how both methods can be combined to form the basis of our Bipolar Active Region Detection (BARD) code and its supporting human supervision module. At present, the BARD catalog contains more than 10,000 unique BMRs tracked and characterized during every day of their observation. Here we also discuss our future plans for the creation of an extended multi-scale magnetic catalog combining the SWAMIS and BARD catalogs.