The solar flare myth

Abstract

Many years of research have demonstrated that large, nonrecurrent geomagnetic storms, shock wave disturbances in the solar wind, and energetic particle events in interplanetary space often occur in close association with large solar flares. This result has led to a paradigm of cause and effect ‐ that large solar flares are the fundamental cause of these events in the near‐Earth space environment. This paradigm, which I call “the solar flare myth,” dominates the popular perception of the relationship between solar activity and interplanetary and geomagnetic events and has provided much of the pragmatic rationale for the study of the solar flare phenomenon. Yet there is good evidence that this paradigm is wrong and that flares do not generally play a central role in producing major transient disturbances in the near‐Earth space environment. In this paper I outline a different paradigm of cause and effect that removes solar flares from their central position in the chain of events leading from the Sun to near‐Earth space. Instead, this central role is given to events known as coronal mass ejections.