Estimating solar radiation environment extremes

TL;DR

This paper applies a recent methodology to estimate the worst-case solar energetic particle event spectra, including paleo events, and validates its effectiveness across multiple historical and modern extreme solar events.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the method can reliably estimate the integral fluence spectra of extreme and paleo solar energetic particle events, extending the approach to historical and modern data.

Findings

Method accurately estimates worst-case spectra for paleo events.

Validates approach with historical GLEs and recent reconstructions.

Quantifies impact of extreme events up to >1 GeV energy.

Abstract

Extreme Solar Energetic Particle Events (ESPEs) were identified almost a decade ago, providing context for super events unleashed by our host star, the Sun. Their assumed solar origin drives the question of their ``worst-case" impact, which could be profound, multifaceted, and devastating for our technological society. A methodology that directly relates the soft X-ray flux $F_{SXR}$ of the driving solar flare of a Solar Energetic Particle event to its ``worst-case" integral fluence spectrum has recently been proposed by Papaioannou et al. (2023). We employ this method to the ESPEs that have been confirmed in cosmogenic radionuclide records up to date, retrieve their ``worst-case" integral spectrum, and compare the latter to the actual -- independently obtained -- recent reconstructions based on the radionuclide records. We first show that our method allows us to estimate the integral fluence spectra of one of the paleo events, i.e., AD774/775, one of the strongest ESPEs found within the cosmogenic radionuclide records so far. We then implement a mean ESPE utilizing four confirmed paleo ESPEs (i.e., AD993/994, AD774/775, 660 BCE, and 7176 BCE) and test the resulting spectrum against the estimated one. Finally, we test the same methodology for a series of strong SEPs recorded on the Earth's surface as Ground Level Enhancements (GLEs). In all investigated cases, the recent re-calibration of $F_{SXR}$ by Hudson et al. (2024) is considered. We conclude that the methodology can adequately estimate the ``worst-case" integral fluence spectra for both strong and extreme SEP events, quantifying their impact up to an integral energy of $\sim$ E $>$ 1 GeV.