Response of Ionospheric Total Electron Content to the Impulsive and Late Phases of X-Class Solar Flares with Various Center-to-Limb Locations

TL;DR

This paper investigates how X-class solar flares, especially their impulsive and late phases, affect Earth's ionosphere, revealing new empirical relationships and the impact of flare location on ionospheric response.

Contribution

It introduces the first empirical relationships linking TEC increases to solar flux during flare phases and explores how flare location influences ionospheric effects.

Findings

Empirical relationships between TEC and solar flux during flare phases.

Flare location affects the intensity of ionospheric response.

Late phase of flares significantly impacts TEC variations.

Abstract

During a solar flare, the fluxes in various lines and continua of the solar spectrum increase, leading to enhanced ionization of the illuminated part of the Earth's ionosphere and an increase in the total electron content (TEC). It has been previously shown that nearly 50% of X-class solar flares exhibit a second peak in warm coronal lines, such as FeXV and FeXVI (called the 'EUV late phase'), the effect of which on the ionosphere remains largely unexplored. This study presents an analysis of the ionospheric response to 14 X-class flares with pronounced late phases. For the first time, empirical relationships between the increase in TEC and the solar flux enhancement during the impulsive and late phases of the flare are derived. Additionally, we demonstrate the influence of flare location on the intensity of geoeffective solar spectral lines and the ratio of the ionospheric responses to the impulsive and late phases of solar flares.