Investigation of the Relationship between Geomagnetic Activity and Solar
Wind Parameters Based on A Novel Neural Network (Potential Learning)
Motoharu Nowada
Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Optical Astronomy and Solar-Terrestrial Environment, Institute of Space Sciences, Shandong University, 180 Wen-Hua West Road, Weihai City, Shandong Province, 264209, People’s Republic of China.
Corresponding Author:[email protected]
Author ProfileAbstract
Predicting geomagnetic conditions based on in-situ solar wind
observations allows us to evade disasters caused by large
electromagnetic disturbances originating from the Sun to save lives and
protect economic activity. In this study, we aimed to examine the
relationship between the Kp index, representing global magnetospheric
activity level, and solar wind conditions using an interpretable neural
network known as potential learning (PL). Data analyses based on neural
networks are difficult to interpret; however, PL learns by focusing on
the “potentiality of input neurons” and can identify which inputs are
significantly utilized by the network. Using the full advantage of PL,
we extracted the influential solar wind parameters that disturb the
magnetosphere under southward Interplanetary magnetic field (IMF)
conditions. The input parameters of PL were the three components of the
IMF (Bx, By, -Bz(Bs)), solar wind flow speed (Vx), and proton number
density (Np) in geocentric solar ecliptic (GSE) coordinates obtained
from the OMNI solar wind database between 1998 and 2019. Furthermore, we
classified these input parameters into two groups (targets), depending
on the Kp level: Kp = 6- to 9 (positive target) and Kp = 0 to 1+
(negative target). Negative target samples were randomly selected to
ensure that numbers of positive and negative targets were equal. The PL
results revealed that solar wind flow speed is an influential parameter
for increasing Kp under southward IMF conditions, which was in good
agreement with previous reports on the statistical relationship between
the Kp index and solar wind velocity, and the Kp formulation based on
the IMF and solar wind plasma parameters. Based on this new neural
network, we aim to construct a more correct and parameter-dependent
space weather forecasting model.