Towards a live homogeneous database of solar active regions based on SOHO/MDI and SDO/HMI synoptic magnetograms. I. Automatic detection and calibration

TL;DR

This paper presents an automated method for detecting and calibrating solar active regions from synoptic magnetograms, creating a reliable, homogeneous, and continuously updated database spanning over two solar cycles to aid solar activity research.

Contribution

It introduces a novel automatic detection and calibration method for ARs from SOHO/MDI and SDO/HMI data, ensuring database homogeneity and reliability for long-term solar studies.

Findings

We successfully detect ARs with improved exclusion of decayed regions.

The database shows weaker flux ARs have less cycle dependence.

Strong ARs exhibit a weaker cycle 24 compared to cycle 23.

Abstract

Recent studies indicate that a small number of rogue solar active regions (ARs) may have a significant impact on the end-of-cycle polar field and the long-term behavior of solar activity. The impact of individual ARs can be qualified based on their magnetic field distribution. This motivates us to build a live homogeneous AR database in a series of papers. As the first of the series, we develop a method to automatically detect ARs from 1996 onwards based on SOHO/MDI and SDO/HMI synoptic magnetograms. The method shows its advantages in excluding decayed ARs and unipolar regions and being compatible with any available synoptic magnetograms. The identified AR flux and area are calibrated based on the co-temporal SDO/HMI and SOHO/MDI data. The homogeneity and reliability of the database are further verified by comparing it with other relevant databases. We find that ARs with weaker flux have a weaker cycle dependence. Stronger ARs show the weaker cycle 24 compared with cycle 23. Several basic parameters, namely, location, area, and flux of negative and positive polarities of identified ARs are provided in the paper. This paves the way for AR's new parameters quantifying the impact on the long-term behavior of solar activity to be presented in the subsequent paper of the series. The constantly updated database covering more than two full solar cycles will be beneficial for the understanding and prediction of the solar cycle. The database and the detection codes are accessible online.