Joint sessions of WGs
Host WG 1, 2: Session on Pre-event reconnection (Friday AM I)
A debate rages between the "breakout" and "tether-cutting" models of
flare/CME initiation.
Both camps view magnetic reconnection as an essential factor in the event
formation.
Host WG 3: Global Energetics (Friday AM I, II)
A cross-disciplinary group will survey the overall energetics of flares,
as pioneered at the ACE-RHESSI-WIND workshop in Taos,
but with much better data now.
Indeed, observations from the SORCE satellite now provide direct
bolometric detections of the most powerful flares, thus capping the
total excess luminosity they radiate.
Host WG 4, 5: Failed CMEs
(Friday AM I)
We sometimes see arrested eruptions ("failed CMEs"), and often - even
sometimes for X-class events - we see flares without CMEs or much
eruptive character at all. What do these events tell us about the
nature of the eruption process?
Please see our fuller description
and event list.
Host WG 1. Debate on MHD kinking
(Friday AM II)
The other side of the coin: is the flare/CME initiation not a result of
magnetic reconnection, but instead the action of an ideal MHD instability
such as the kink?
Host WG2, 7. Discussion of reconnection in the magnetosphere
(Friday AM II)
Unlike the corona, we can fly directly through regions in the magnetosphere
(the magnetopause, the geotail, the lobes) where reconnection really
happens, and learn from in-situ measurements about particle
distribution functions, wave populations, etc., about which we can only
speculate in the corona.
This joint session will feature presentations by Stuart Bale
and Amitava Bhattacharjee.