Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences (Oct 2022)

Predicting CME arrival time through data integration and ensemble learning

  • Khalid A. Alobaid,
  • Khalid A. Alobaid,
  • Khalid A. Alobaid,
  • Yasser Abduallah,
  • Yasser Abduallah,
  • Jason T. L. Wang,
  • Jason T. L. Wang,
  • Haimin Wang,
  • Haimin Wang,
  • Haimin Wang,
  • Haodi Jiang,
  • Haodi Jiang,
  • Yan Xu,
  • Yan Xu,
  • Yan Xu,
  • Vasyl Yurchyshyn,
  • Hongyang Zhang,
  • Huseyin Cavus,
  • Ju Jing,
  • Ju Jing,
  • Ju Jing

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fspas.2022.1013345
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9

Abstract

Read online

The Sun constantly releases radiation and plasma into the heliosphere. Sporadically, the Sun launches solar eruptions such as flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). CMEs carry away a huge amount of mass and magnetic flux with them. An Earth-directed CME can cause serious consequences to the human system. It can destroy power grids/pipelines, satellites, and communications. Therefore, accurately monitoring and predicting CMEs is important to minimize damages to the human system. In this study we propose an ensemble learning approach, named CMETNet, for predicting the arrival time of CMEs from the Sun to the Earth. We collect and integrate eruptive events from two solar cycles, #23 and #24, from 1996 to 2021 with a total of 363 geoeffective CMEs. The data used for making predictions include CME features, solar wind parameters and CME images obtained from the SOHO/LASCO C2 coronagraph. Our ensemble learning framework comprises regression algorithms for numerical data analysis and a convolutional neural network for image processing. Experimental results show that CMETNet performs better than existing machine learning methods reported in the literature, with a Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient of 0.83 and a mean absolute error of 9.75 h.

Keywords