arXiv subjects

Khagendra Katuwal

Publications and source records attributed to Khagendra Katuwal.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Multi-Instrument Analysis of NOAA AR 12781: Coupling Surface Evolution of the AR with Its In-Situ Solar Wind Signatures

Understanding the relationship between photospheric magnetic flux evolution and coronal emission remains an important problem in heliophysics. We investigate the decay of NOAA Active Region 12781 from 7 to 11 November 2020 using observations from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Coronal emission was measured from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) 193\~Å images, while the photospheric signed and unsigned magnetic flux was derived from Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) observations of the FeĨ 6173\~Å line. The unsigned magnetic flux and mean 193\~Å intensity showed a strong inverse relationship, with Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients of $r\_p=-0.771$ and $r\_s=-0.758$, respectively. During the five-day decay phase, the unsigned magnetic flux decreased by 36.54\\% from its maximum value, while the coronal emission increased by 21.96\\%. We also compared the remote-sensing observations with near-Earth solar-wind and interplanetary magnetic-field measurements from the OMNI database using an estimated propagation delay. The results show that the coronal emission did not vary directly with the photospheric magnetic flux during the decay of AR\~12781. The possible association with the solar wind is discussed cautiously because a direct source connection cannot be established from the time-delay estimate alone.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2026

Study of Butterfly-Shaped Coronal Hole Evolution Across the Solar Disk

We studied the evolution of a butterfly-shaped coronal hole (CH) observed from 2025 September 8 to 14 using SDO/AIA 193~Å images and SDO/HMI line-of-sight magnetograms. The CH boundary was identified using a fixed 100~DN intensity threshold, and its area, mean EUV intensity, and total unsigned magnetic flux were tracked across the solar disk. As the CH approached the central meridian, its area increased from approximately $7.70\times10^{16}$ to $1.63\times10^{17}$~m$^{2}$ and its unsigned magnetic flux from $8.68\times10^{21}$ to $1.91\times10^{22}$~Mx, while the mean 193~Å intensity decreased from about 61 to 45~DN. The area and unsigned flux showed similar temporal trends, whereas the intensity varied oppositely. Near central-meridian passage, these quantities remained relatively stable for several days. A high-speed solar-wind stream was detected at 1~AU about 2--4 days later, reaching 600--750~km~s$^{-1}$, consistent with the CH being its likely solar source. These results link the morphological, radiative, and magnetic evolution of the CH with the subsequent high-speed solar-wind stream.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2026

Solar-Cycle Variation of Newly Emerging Coronal Holes during Solar Cycle 24

Coronal holes (CHs) are regions of predominantly open magnetic field and important sources of high-speed solar wind streams. We present a manually compiled catalogue of newly emerging CHs during Solar Cycle 24 (2010-2019), identified from daily CHIMERA maps provided by SolarMonitor. Unlike existing area-based catalogues, our dataset tracks the daily emergence of new CHs in northern, southern, and equatorial latitude zones. The emergence rate of equatorial CHs is anti-correlated with the International Sunspot Number (Pearson r = -0.523, p = 6.2 x 10^-9), indicating reduced formation of low-latitude CHs near solar maximum. The hemispheric asymmetry of CH emergence is also anti-correlated with the hemispheric asymmetry of sunspot activity (r = -0.461, p = 5.2 x 10^-7), suggesting that new CHs preferentially emerge in the hemisphere with lower sunspot activity. The total CH emergence rate is lowest near solar maximum and highest during the declining phase. These results provide new observational constraints on the evolution of open magnetic flux over the solar cycle.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2026

Unipolarity of the solar magnetic field in equatorial coronal holes

A study of the unbalanced magnetic polarity distribution of 70 coronal holes was performed. Data from the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) were used to examine the photospheric line-of-sight magnetic field ($B_{\mathrm{LOS}}$) beneath these coronal holes. The skewness ($S$) values of the $B_{\mathrm{LOS}}$ distributions revealed significant asymmetry, characterized by the dominance of one magnetic polarity, with $\sim88\%$ of the coronal holes exhibiting a skewness value ranging from $\pm(0.20~\text{to}~0.40)$. The corresponding magnetic flux imbalance ($Φ_{\mathrm{imb}}$) ranges from $20\%$ to $45\%$. In contrast, quiet-Sun regions show symmetric magnetic field distributions with skewness values less than$~0.11$ and flux imbalance less than $11.0\%$. A study of a coronal hole as it traverses across the disk shows that the magnetic field distribution does not evolve significantly over this time, remaining stable across half a solar rotation. A moderate correlation ($r = 0.60$) between the magnetic flux imbalance and the speed of associated high speed solar wind streams ($v_{\mathrm{HSS}}$) suggests that flux imbalance may contribute to the generation of these faster solar wind streams. These results imply that regions with higher flux imbalance ($Φ_{\mathrm{imb}}$), indicative of more open magnetic field structures, present more favorable conditions for plasma acceleration as compared to closed bi-polar field, but the moderate correlation indicates that other factors may also play important roles.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2025

The CHASM-SWPC Dataset for Coronal Hole Detection & Analysis

Coronal holes (CHs) are low-activity, low-density solar coronal regions with open magnetic field lines (Cranmer 2009). In the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) spectrum, CHs appear as dark patches. Using daily hand-drawn maps from the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), we developed a semi-automated pipeline to digitize the SWPC maps into binary segmentation masks. The resulting masks constitute the CHASM-SWPC dataset, a high-quality dataset to train and test automated CH detection models, which is released with this paper. We developed CHASM (Coronal Hole Annotation using Semi-automatic Methods), a software tool for semi-automatic annotation that enables users to rapidly and accurately annotate SWPC maps. The CHASM tool enabled us to annotate 1,111 CH masks, comprising the CHASM-SWPC-1111 dataset. We then trained multiple CHRONNOS (Coronal Hole RecOgnition Neural Network Over multi-Spectral-data) architecture (Jarolim et al. 2021) neural networks using the CHASM-SWPC dataset and compared their performance. Training the CHRONNOS neural network on these data achieved an accuracy of 0.9805, a True Skill Statistic (TSS) of 0.6807, and an intersection-over-union (IoU) of 0.5668, which is higher than the original pretrained CHRONNOS model Jarolim et al. (2021) achieved an accuracy of 0.9708, a TSS of 0.6749, and an IoU of 0.4805, when evaluated on the CHASM-SWPC-1111 test set.

astro-ph.IM↗