Statistical Relationships between Solar, Interplanetary, and Geomagnetospheric Disturbances, 1976–2000

Within the framework of the Space Weather program, 25-year data sets for solar X-ray observations, measurements of plasma and magnetic field parameters in the solar wind, and Dst index variations are analyzed to reveal the factors that have had the greatest influence on the development of magnetospheric storms. The correlation between solar flares and magnetic storms practically does not exceed a level of correlation for random processes. In particular, no relation was found between the importance of solar flares and the minimum of the Dst index for storms that could be connected with considered flares by their time delay. The coronal mass ejections (CME; data on these phenomena cover a small part of the interval) result in storms with Dst < –60 nT only in half of the cases. The most geoeffective interplanetary phenomena are the magnetic clouds (MC), which many believe to be interplanetary manifestations of CMEs, and compressions in the region of interaction of slow and fast streams in the solar wind (the so-called Corotating Interaction Region, CIR). They correspond to about two-thirds of all observed magnetic storms. For storms with –100 < Dst < –60 nT, the frequencies of storms from MC and CIR being approximately equal. For strong storms with Dst < – 100 nT, the fraction of storms from MC is considerably higher. The problems of reliable prediction of geomagnetic disturbances from observations of the Sun and conditions in interplanetary space are discussed.